


Call This World Home

by Seascribe



Category: due South
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, Post-Call of the Wild, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/pseuds/Seascribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know how people say 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?' Well, this time it most definitely did not."</p><p>Six weeks after Call of the Wild, Ray Vecchio, back in Chicago and still dealing with the fallout of his time undercover, ends up with a baby he didn't know he had.  On top of that, Fraser's back up in the Northwest Territories and being partners with Ray Kowalski is turning out to be more complicated than Ray'd bargained for.  Eventually, something's gotta give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call This World Home

**Author's Note:**

> This story assumes a slight AU from the original, unused ending of CotW. Fraser is back up north, Ray and Ray are partnered together at the 2-7, and there was no Quest and no bowling alley in Florida with Stella. 
> 
> It feels like I've been writing this story forever. I was lucky to be surrounded by fantastic, supportive people the whole time! Huge thanks are owed to all my friends on LJ/DW and Tumblr and to everybody in the Big Bang support chats who reassured me (repeatedly!) that this was a story that people would want to read. I am grateful in particular to Luzula, who read along and held my hand and helped me figure out what I was doing; to Deputychairman, who offered feedback, encouragement, and reassurances about babies; and to Scribe, who stepped up at the last minute to help me figure out the ending. Extra special thanks goes to Heather, who in addition to creating a phenomenal set of complementary works for this story also did a final read-through. Any remaining errors are entirely my own. 
> 
> You can find Heather's master post for her complementary works [here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/ds_c6d_bigbang_2013/works/994568). She really went above and beyond, creating a vid and a poster for this story, and I am completely floored by how incredible they are and how well they fit the story. I really encourage you to go check them out.

Maybe they tried to break it to him easy, Ray doesn't know. Maybe there was a letter that went astray or a phone call that never got put through to his desk. He hasn't gotten a new cellphone yet--which drives Kowalski nuts, which is maybe part of why it's taking him so long--and the FBI isn't exactly in the habit of making top-secret calls to civilian numbers. 

Anyway, the point is that Ray's been back in Chicago for less than six weeks, and this lady who says she's a social worker with the FBI is pushing some papers across his desk saying things like, "fifteen years without parole," and "paternity test results," and "foster system." Ray is having a hard time following her. 

There are pictures too: a mugshot of a woman, staring defiantly into the camera; a polaroid of a red-faced newborn in one of those fluffy pink hospital hats; a chubby baby on her stomach in a foldable playpen. The social worker is still talking; Ray hears "prepared to fully relinquish custody."

He stands up so fast that the chair shrieks as it slides across the tile. Everybody in the bullpen turns to look at him, and then tries to pretend that they hadn't. Thank you, God, that Frannie's at the Academy now.

"I can't--I gotta--," Ray says and books it for the men's room. That chicken salad sandwich definitely hasn't improved on a repeat viewing, Ray thinks, a little hysterically. Afterwards, he's shaking so hard he has to close the toilet lid and sit down because otherwise, he'd probably fall. He can't go back out there. Even if his legs weren't suddenly made out of jello, no way can he go back out there, with the social worker lady standing abandoned by his desk, and probably the whole station heard him tossing his cookies.

The bathroom door thunks open. Ray thinks about standing on the toilet seat, waiting for whoever it is to go away, except, oh yeah, jello-legs, and anyway, he can already see Kowalski's beat-up boots in front of the stall. 

"You dying in here?"

"Fuck off," Ray groans. 

"Sure," Kowalski says easily. "Listen, I took Susan--uh, the social whatsit--to interrogation two. Don't know what the hell she was thinking, springing it on you out in the bullpen like that." Ray doesn't say anything, and after a second, Kowalski walks away. 

Ray seriously considers taking the fire emergency exit and high-tailing it out of here, but if there's anybody that knows how useless it is to try to run away from the FBI, it's Raymond Vecchio. If they want him, they'll get him, and his only choice is whether this thing goes down in front of his coworkers or in front of his Ma. Not much of a choice. 

Ray splashes some water on his face and goes down the hall to interrogation two.

*

"I don't remember her," Ray says, and God, that makes him feel like shit. He's not that kind of guy--but Armando was, and a lot of worse stuff too. Forgetting a woman he'd accidentally knocked up was pretty low on the list of rotten things he'd done while he was Armando. 

"Not a regular in the Bookman's circles," agrees the social worker-- _Susan_ , he reminds himself. "Elena Russo was connected with a narcotics ring that was recently brought down." That, Ray does remember; he'd given some of the testimonies that had been used to do it. But he's been changing the channel every time it comes up on the news.

It must've been pretty early on; the little girl looks at least five or six months old. Probably everything had been arranged by one of Armando's lieutenants, bringing Elena in because they thought he'd like her, maybe, and because it might grease the wheels of whatever deal was going down. Ray just doesn't remember. Those days were nothing but terror and trying to keep his story straight, hoping to keep his head above water long enough to at least do some good there, even though he'd stopped planning on making it out alive after his first day under.

"And she wants to sign over full custody?" Ray can't figure that out. Elena had kept the baby, been smart enough not to let on that it was Langoustini's, had clearly cared about her kid. 

"No other family members have come forward," Susan says. "After fifteen months in foster care, social services would seek a permanent adoptive home for the child, and Elena would lose all parental rights anyway. It seems to her that this is the best option for her daughter." 

Jesus. Sure, the woman's a criminal, but that law is some kind of fucked up. Ray realises he doesn't know the kid's name. He flips through some of the papers trying to find it. 

"Her name is Lucia," Susan says, pulling out the birth certificate for him. "She's seven months old." 

Ray looks at the picture of her sitting in the playpen. She's wearing a green onesie and has lots of wispy dark hair. Ray doesn't think she looks much like him--and that might be for the best, really--but then he was never any good at the family-resemblance game his mother and sisters and aunts liked to play every time somebody had a baby. She's his though, he doesn't doubt that. It's right there on the paternity report, and on some deeper level that has nothing to do with court-mandated DNA testing. 

"I know this is a lot to take in," Susan says, and she's giving him a sympathetic look. "But I'm afraid that this is an extremely unusual case, due to the FBI's involvement, and they would like for it to be resolved quickly and quietly. I have the impression this is motivated at least in part by a concern for your bodily safety." 

Yeah, Ray can see that. It'd been pretty hard,convincing the Feebs that no way in hell was he going into Witness Protection--he'd just gotten his own life back, he wasn't going to throw it away again, this time for good--and it'd be pretty bad for his health if anybody down in Vegas managed to figure out the name and location of the guy who'd been wearing Langoustini's face. Which, if the media gets a hold of this, is all too likely to happen. 

"I can give you a couple of days," Susan says gently, "to think it all over." 

Ray's still trying to put his life-- _himself_ \--back together after Vegas. Sometimes the whole thing feels like it happened to someone else, and not in the nice, distant "I watched it on TV," kind of way, but in the "for more than a year Ray Vecchio was dead" terrifying kind of way. Armando is ground in like glass with the pieces of the person Ray used to be.

But the little girl in those pictures isn't Armando Langoustini's daughter. And if Ray doesn't take her, she's going to spend fifteen months bouncing around in foster care before they'll even _start_ looking for a real home for her. There really isn't a decision to be made here. 

"You got all the paperwork with you?" Ray asks Susan.

*

Susan is kind of reluctant to jump into signing everything right there, makes some noises about Ray talking to the other people in his life, making sure he's doing what's best for everybody involved, but that's crap. Ray's doing the only thing he _can_ do. The little voice in the back of his head, the one that still sounds like Fraser, says, "You're doing the right thing." 

God, Ray wishes Fraser were here. He'd make all of this seem--not normal, maybe, but manageable. But Fraser is back up there in the great frozen nowhere, probably at least ten miles away from the nearest phone. Which sucks, because Ray could really use some moral support right now. 

Filling out the paperwork takes the rest of the afternoon. Ray's supposed to be doing the kind of paperwork they pay him for, but just this once, he figures the Lieu will be understanding. And it's a slow day; interrogation one and three will be enough. 

Ray signs his name on line after line, until it feels like his hand is going to fall off--hey, after this, maybe he'll finally be able to remember his own goddamn name, and stop having to turn Armando's signature into his own halfway through--and re-does his tax forms. _Dependants: 1._

"When do I--" His voice comes out kind of wrecked. He swallows a couple of times and tries again. "When can I bring her home?" 

"It would be ill-advised for you to go to Las Vegas yourself," Susan says, arranging the pile of papers into her briefcase. "Lucia will be taken into Federal custody and placed under my charge to bring back to Chicago. Everything is contingent on the flights, of course, but Monday or Tuesday seems likely."

Less than a week. Ray scrubs a hand over his face. At least he has Ma and Maria to help; they probably have just about anything Lucia might need at the house already, left over from when Gia was born. 

"Okay," Ray says. "Okay. Listen, if Elena wants to, you know, write her letters or something, we could maybe work that out. Maybe I can send her pictures, if she wants." He has a feeling it isn't going to happen; the FBI will shoot it down as too risky, but he has to offer, has to do something to try to make this whole thing less wrong.

"I'll make sure she knows," Susan says. "Is there anything else?"

"Yeah," Ray says. "Give me some warning this time, will ya?" He's going to have to replace his cell phone for sure now. He scrawls down the house phone number and just to be safe, Kowalski's cell too. 

"Of course." Susan shakes his hand. "Good luck with everything, Detective Vecchio." 

"Boy am I gonna need it," Ray says, as the door swings closed behind her. He puts his head down on the table. 

*

The door to the interrogation room swings open after a while, and whoever opened it kind of hesitates, like they're having second thoughts about coming in. It's Kowalski. Ray can tell from the way he strides across the room, when he finally does make up his mind whether he's coming or going. Ray doesn't look up.

"She's way too cute to be your kid," Kowalski says from overhead. 

"Fuck off," Ray says again, but he's too wiped to make it sound even halfway like he really means it. 

"See if I ever finish your paperwork for you again, asshole," Kowalski says. 

"Right, because I love it when the prosecutors think I got knocked on the head and forgot how to spell," Ray says. 

"Hey, I did not come in here for your verbal abuse," Kowalski says. "I had Marta leave her computer up, in case you wanted to email Fraser before you went home. He's coming back from patrol today; might check his email at the detachment before he heads home." They're an hour behind up there, so it's possible, but Ray would be surprised if Fraser checks his email more than once a month. And Kowalski knows Fraser's patrol schedule? Ray doesn't have any room for more emotions right now, so he pushes away the little shameful curl of jealousy and guilt to deal with later.

"You think I could maybe call him?" God, he feels like a loser. But he's about to have to go home and break it to his Ma that he had a kid on the wrong side of the blankets, and please God don't make him talk about all the other even worse stuff he was doing while he was in Vegas. Also, in less than a week he's going to have to take responsibility for this baby he didn't even know existed until three hours ago. So it's not a crime if he'd really, really like to talk to his best friend right now. 

Fraser has always had this unshakeable faith in him that made Ray think maybe he was a better man than he always figured. Benny is--even though Ray's never told him--the reason Ray went to Vegas. So Ray's pretty sure that Benny can convince him, at least for the duration of a phonecall, that he can handle this parenting thing. 

Kowalski's giving him kind of a weird look that Ray can't exactly figure out. But he's pretty sure it's not a "Jeez, what a wuss" look at least. 

"You can pay me back for the long-distance with a paperwork IOU," Kowalski says and flips his cellphone at Ray. For a second, Ray's kind of worried that Kowalski's going to stick around and listen, but he doesn't, and he turns the lights on in the observation booth so that Ray knows he's got some actual privacy.

It feels like the phone rings for ages, before one of Fraser's junior Mounties finally picks it up. "Just a moment, please," she says when Ray asks for Fraser, and Ray sags with relief. 

"Corporal Benton Fraser speaking," Fraser's voice says in his ear, a little staticky. 

"Benny! Man, it's good to hear your voice." Ray winces at what a stupid line that is, but it's _true_ , and on the other end of the phone he can practically hear Fraser's thousand-watt smile when he says, "Yours as well, Ray. How is your recovery going?"

"Back at work, finally," Ray says. "Partnered with Kowalski. Haven't tried to strangle him yet." 

"I'm glad that you're both in such good hands," Fraser says cheerfully, choosing to ignore the last part. 

"Yeah, right," Ray says. "Listen, Benny, I'm on Kowalski's cell phone so I gotta be kinda quick."

"Is something wrong, Ray?" 

Ray makes a noise that's trying to be a laugh. "Not exactly. You know how people say 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?' Well, this time it most definitely did not." 

"I'm not sure I understand," Fraser says. He sounds worried. "You're not in danger, are you?" 

"No! Jeez, nothing like that. It's--I got a kid, Fraser. She turned seven months old last week." 

"Ah," Fraser says. "And her mother?" 

"Prison," Ray says. He keeps trying to laugh and it keeps coming out sounding worse and worse. 

"Oh, Ray," Fraser says. "What's her name?" 

"Lucia," Ray tells him. "Lucia Annette Russo, for now, but there's paperwork going through to make her a Vecchio." 

"She's very lucky," Fraser says. 

"That word mean something different in Canada?" Ray says. "Lucky to be taken away from her mom and given to a fucked-up total stranger that didn't even know she existed?" 

"Lucky to be going to a family that will cherish her," Fraser corrects gently. "I've experienced first-hand how welcoming and generous your family are, Ray, yourself especially. You'll be an excellent father." 

"Yeah, well, I had a great example of what not to do," Ray says. He wants to keep talking, doesn't want to let go of this tenuous moment of connection with Fraser and face up to everything that's happening, but he doesn't have much choice. He sighs. "Okay, Kowalski's phone bill is gonna be through the roof, I gotta go. I'll send you a picture of her, okay?" 

"I look forward to it," Fraser says. "And, Ray, if there's anything I can do--"

"Thanks, Benny." 

*

Ray spends the drive home rehearsing exactly how and when he's going to break the news to his Ma, real careful, as low-key as anything involving a Vecchio ever is. And then she can tell the rest of the family, and maybe Ray will miss out on some of that drama. 

But what actually happens is that he walks in, and Francesca jumps on him before he's even got his jacket off. 

"Jeez, I thought you weren't ever going to get home!" She drags him into the parlour and shuts the door. "Where's the baby?" 

Shit. Somebody at the 2-7 must have told Elaine. "God, Frannie, tell me you haven't told Ma and Maria yet." 

Frannie gives him a withering look. "Of course not, what kind of sister do you think I am? So it's true, there is a baby?" 

Ray nods and slumps down onto the chintz loveseat. The plastic slipcover squeaks. 

"Oh my God," Frannie says. "So where is it?" 

"In Vegas, where do you think?" Ray snaps. "They don't just mail babies across the country and hope somebody's there to pick them up." 

"Yeah, so when are you bringing it home?" Frannie hesitates, and Ray sees her eyes widen a little. "You are bringing it home?" 

"Her name's Lucia," Ray says. "And yeah, of course I am. Early next week." 

Frannie perches on the arm of the loveseat. "What about, you know, her mom and stuff?" 

"She's out of the picture," Ray says. "Right now, we're going to leave it at that, understand?" He can't have this conversation with his little sister, not now, and maybe not ever. Because he can't tell her about just Elena; he'd have to tell her about all of the others, about the narcotics and the time he put a guy in the hospital for trying to hire some of the Bookman's people out from under him. Once he starts talking about that kind of stuff, Ray's scared he won't ever be able to stop. Frannie doesn't need to know what happened while he was under, doesn't need to know how hard it's been for him to let go of the person he was in Vegas. He can't stand the thought of her being afraid of what she sees when she looks at him.

Frannie leans over and hugs him hard. "It'll be okay," she says. "It's gonna be great." 

Ray knows as soon as he steps out of the parlour that he's not going to make it through dinner without having to explain the whole thing. Maria's giving him this beady-eyed look, the same one from when he was sixteen and she knew he was sneaking out at night, but couldn't ever catch him at it. 

Better just get it over with, then. He pulls the photos of Lucia out of his wallet and hands them over to his mother. 

"This is Lucia," he mumbles. "She's my--she's gonna be coming to live with me in a few days." 

Ma gets tears in her eyes and says, "Oh, Raimondo, she's beautiful," and Maria starts offering to unearth Gia's old carseat and crib bumpers and that little bouncy doorway swing. Tony makes some commiserating "say goodbye to the good old days" noises, and Frannie elbows him, hard. She grins at Ray.

Maybe she's right, and this isn't going to be so bad. But of course, as soon as Ray starts letting himself think that, Ma swoops in with the hard questions. "Why didn't we know about her? Where's her mother?"

"Ma, you don't want to know," Ray says tiredly. "I promise, you really, really don't." 

"What do you mean, I don't want to know about the mother of my own grandchild?" Ma says. "Of course I want to know!" 

"It's not like I'm gonna be bringing her home to meet the family," Ray says. "She's not ever gonna be around, so can we drop this?"

"Why not?" Ma demands. "What do you mean she isn't going to be around? She doesn't want to be with her baby?" 

"I'm sure she does!" Ray says, standing up. He can't do this. "But she's in prison, and I put her there, and before today, I couldn't have picked her out of a line-up. There, now you know. You happy?" 

The tears are back in Ma's eyes, and everybody is staring at him. Maria's mouth is actually hanging open. 

Ray has to get out of here. His chest hurts and he can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but bolt, going for the door without even stopping to grab his jacket. 

"Ray!" Frannie gets up and runs after him, but Ray goes straight for the crappy old Ford he's driving until he can replace the Riv, and peels out of the driveway. He doesn't know how long he drives or where he's going, just that he ends up parked illegally outside of Kowalski's apartment building, panting like he's run a marathon. 

_Jesus Christ._ Ray'd thought he was getting over all of this, the panic attacks and everything. He puts his forehead on the steering wheel and just _shakes_ , hating himself and hating how fucked-up everything is and not having a goddamn clue how to fix any of it.

Kowalski's done a lot of undercover. He's the only person Ray knows right now that maybe would understand, maybe could help. _Undercover's lonely._ Sure, Kowalski's an asshole, but he's a good partner, maybe even a good friend, even if neither one of them is ready to admit that yet. He'd talked Ray down the one time he got kind of shaky when they were out on a case, and then just let it go, like it'd never happened. 

So what, Ray's supposed to show up on his doorstep all sweaty and shaking and ask him to do it again? No way in hell. Ray's got to pull himself together. It's over, it's done, and he is moving on. 

*

"Vecc--Kowalski." Ray's not the only one having a hard time remembering who he is now. "No, this is Ray Kowalski's cellphone. Didn't you get the memo? We're not the same guy anymore." Kowalski listens for a second, and then passes the phone to Ray. "You gotta get your own phone, this is confusing everybody. Including me."

Ray's been meaning to do that, it's just he has about a million other things to do too--pulling stuff down out of the attic, filling out new insurance paperwork for the CPD, letting Maria and Frannie drag him out shopping for all the stuff that babies apparently need, which Ray really has no idea about, despite there having been four or five of them in and out of his house over the course of the last decade. 

"The original Raymond Vecchio speaking," he says into the cell phone. 

It's the social worker. Ray hopes she didn't try to tell him anything except for when to be at the airport, because the only thing he remembers after he hangs up is her saying, "We're scheduled to arrive at O'Hare at thirteen hundred hours on Monday." 

"Got a landing date for the kid?" Kowalski says, and he's grinning. 

A little to his own surprise, Ray grins back. "Monday." His hands aren't shaking when he gives Kowalski back his cell phone. He feels--well, he's not sure how he feels. But he's okay. This is okay. "You could come over for dinner sometime next week, if you wanted to meet her," Ray blurts, totally out of the blue.

Kowalski looks kind of shocked, but he says, "Yeah, okay. I mean, if you're sure." 

"Sure I'm sure," Ray says, even though he still has no idea why he offered in the first place. "Anyway, Ma's always talking about how much she misses her _figlio biondo_." 

Kowalski looks pleased. "I definitely don't need an excuse to eat your Ma's cooking," he says, and just like that things are back to normal between them. 

Ray's kind of proud of how calm he is as Monday gets closer. Things at home are still a little awkward--everybody's walking on eggshells like they're afraid a strong breeze would knock him off his rocker again--but everything Ray can think of is ready. Nothing to do but bring the kid home. He's got this.

That vaguely surprising sense of calm lasts all the way through the weekend, through two last minute shopping trips and even the drive to the airport. In fact, it lasts right up until the moment that Susan puts Lucia into his arms and she takes one look at him and bursts into tears. At which point reality floods back in, and Ray realises he is in no way prepared to be responsible for this tiny person's physical and emotional well-being for the next seventeen years. 

"She's had a rough couple of days," Susan says kindly, as Lucia reaches for her. Susan offers her a stuffed rabbit from the diaper bag she's carrying, but Lucia cries harder and turns away. 

"Hey, I know, this whole thing sucks," Ray says, bouncing Lucia up and down a little. "Everything you've been through, and at the end of it you get somebody like me? I'd be disappointed too, kid. But we're gonna have to do our best, okay?" He should probably stop talking before Susan realises that actually, this a huge mistake and Lucia would be better off with someone, anyone else. But she just gives Ray an encouraging smile and makes a "keep going" gesture. 

So Ray rubs Lucia's back and keeps talking to her, telling her about all kinds of inane things like the weather report he saw this morning--way colder and wetter than she's used to--and a toned down version of the latest episode of his and Kowalski's ongoing fight over whether the Cubs or the White Sox suck more. By the time they get out to the car, Lucia's wailing has died down into miserable little hiccoughs.

"You gonna be okay if I put you back here?" Ray asks her, opening the door. "Don't judge me too bad for the car, okay? Your uncle Benny caught my Riviera on fire and got it driven into the lake." Lucia starts screaming again when Ray settles her into her rear facing car-seat, and Ray catches himself halfway through an automatic gesture to pick her back up. 

"We're going home so your nonna can start spoiling you," he says, desperate for her to stop crying. It's making his hands shake. But she doesn't stop, and Ray's already taken too long getting her situated, so he closes the door as gently as he can and forces himself to get into the driver's seat. He grips the steering wheel til his knuckles are white so Susan won't see his hands trembling. 

Ray starts talking again, telling her more about Benny, about him standing statue duty, about the wolf, about all the Rivs he'd destroyed, anything he can think of that is vaguely kid-appropriate, even a couple of garbled Inuit stories he remembers. She doesn't stop crying, but talking pushes down the rising feeling of panic a little, so Ray keeps it up the entire ride home.

Lucia's finally starting to run out of steam by the time Ray pulls into the garage. His heart is still going way too fast, but his hands feel a little steadier. It only takes him two tries to undo the buckle of her seat belt. 

"Welcome home," Ray says. "This next part is gonna be kind of scary, but just remember that you're a Vecchio woman too, so you got nothing to worry about." Lucia makes a tired little noise that sounds kind of like one of Dief's skeptical sighs and pops her thumb back in her mouth. 

Frannie must have been waiting for them at the door, because she flings it open before Ray can even pull out his keys, and starts cooing baby-talk at Lucia in Italian and English. Lucia jumps and starts bawling again. Ma and Maria are hot on Frannie's heels, and even Nicci and David are piping about how they want to see the baby. 

"Hey, give the kid a little room to breathe," Ray says, trying to keep his voice level. Everybody ignores him. His head is starting to throb in time with Lucia's crying. 

"Can we get through the goddamn door?" Ray says, and it comes out low and menacing, one-hundred percent Armando Langoustini, and even somebody who never met the Bookman wouldn't have any trouble hearing how, if he has to wait more than five seconds to get into his own goddamn house, things are going to get ugly. _Shit._ Everybody falls back like he'd thrown a bucket of ice water over them. 

Ray tries to fix it, adding, "I mean, come on, she just got off her first plane ride across the country," but it sounds fake and pathetic. Frannie and Maria's eyes are huge, and Ma's got that tight-lipped look she used to wear when Pop came home on a bender. Ray's junior year of high school, when he finally got tall enough that Pop couldn't shove him around anymore, he'd sworn to himself that nobody was ever going to make his ma and sisters look that way again, not and get away with it. 

Now it's him they're looking at, and Ray can't stand it. He's sweating bullets all of the sudden, and there's a roaring in his ears like a freight train. "I gotta go get her stuff out of the car," he wheezes, thrusting Lucia at Ma, and wishing he could unsee the way she flinched back before she could catch herself. Susan tries to intercept him, but Frannie gets in the way, offering to take her bag and get her a cup of coffee. Ray bails.

He needs a stiff drink. Or six. Right, because Ma and the girls weren't already horrified enough. Ray braces his hands on the hood of the Ford, trying to breathe. He doesn't know how to make this stop. Times like this, it feels like all the pieces of himself he'd picked up out of the wreckage and jerry-rigged together are crumbling again, leaving him as vulnerable and useless as he'd been lying there in that hospital bed, watching Fraser leave, watching Frannie crying. 

He realises he's got his cell phone out. Even though he's only used it a couple times, he knows Fraser's number at the detachment by heart, Kowalski's cell too. But Fraser's probably out policing, and Kowalski--well, he never signed up to be Ray's babysitter, and Ray's got plenty of pride left still. The phone goes back into his pocket. His hands are dirty from the hood of the car. He should really get out here and do some work on it. Who knows how long it'll be before another Riv comes along, and even if this is just a beater car until then, it might as well look decent. 

It needs washing and detailing, probably could do with some new spark plugs and timing belts put in too. Ray pops the hood for the first time since he bought it off the lot, and then remembers that he should probably go back inside before they start worrying that he's out here taping up the tailpipe.

Ma's still holding Lucia, sitting in her big wingback armchair while Lucia slurps down formula like it's going out of style. She gives Ray a look, another one that he remembers from the bad old days. It's the one that says, "We're going to pretend that everything is fine." 

"Look at how sweet she is," Ma says, patting Lucia's chubby little leg. Her smile only looks a little bit forced. "Not like you, Raimondo, you were such a fussy baby!" 

"Aw, Ma, quit it with that," Ray says, just like he's supposed to. He wants to hold Lucia again, now that neither one of them is having a meltdown, but Ma's smile turns genuine when she directs it at the baby and Susan's giving him impatient looks over the top of her coffee cup. 

"I'll be quick," she says, when Ray takes her into the kitchen. "I just wanted to give you a few more resources, and make sure that you didn't have any questions." 

The resources are a copy of _What to Expect: The First Year_ and a half-page list of FBI-approved therapists. Which is just so fucking typical that Ray starts laughing, and has a hard time stopping before it crosses over the line into crazy and alarming.

"Did her mom have anything for her?" Ray asks. 

"There's a sealed letter in the folder with her medical records," Susan says. "But the FBI have judged regular contact too risky for everyone involved." 

It makes him feel like shit, but Ray's grateful. That's one less piece of Vegas to worry about, and one less thing pulling Lucia away from her family here. He calls a cab for Susan and then walks her to the door. And that's it. This is the official beginning of Ray's life as a single parent. So he should probably get back in there and start getting acquainted with his kid. 

Lucia's finished her bottle by now and looks sort of bewildered by all the attention she's getting. Nicci's tickling her feet, and Ma and Maria are debating whether or not she has the Vecchio family nose. Frannie's got her camera out and is snapping pictures so fast she's probably going to go through the whole roll in about five minutes. 

"Take a couple for Fraser," Ray says. "I told him I'd send him a picture of her." 

"You should let me get some of you holding her," Frannie says. "I bet he'd like that." 

Lucia looks like she'd rather stay right where she is, with someone who clearly knows what they're doing, and when Ray picks her up, her lower lip starts to tremble. 

"Hey, no, don't cry," Ray says, and because he can't think of anything else to do, he makes Fraser's stupid puffin-face at her. Her lip stops trembling, and she goes from looking unhappy to just looking kind of confused. Hey, Ray'll take it. 

Frannie snickers, and Ray says, "So help me God, Frannie, if that picture finds its way within ten blocks of the 2-7, I will make sure that you spend the rest of your time at the Academy honing your traffic directing skills." 

"So smile, bro," Frannie retorts. She takes way more pictures than Ray thinks can possibly be necessary, and by the time she stops to change out the film, Lucia's rubbing her eyes and yawning. 

"Long day, huh?" Ray says. "I feel ya. Let's go take a nap." He and Maria had spent the weekend getting the nursery cleaned up and ready for a baby to sleep in again, but it's on the opposite end of the house and on a different floor from his room. The fancy baby-monitor Ray'd bought does okay, but leaving her in there still feels way too much like abandoning her right now. So he carries her upstairs and puts one of her fuzzy blankets on top of his quilt and stacks a row of pillows along the edge of the bed. 

But he can't bring himself to stop holding her. So he rearranges the pillows again and lies down, real careful, with her on his chest, his hand spread out over her back. She's already most of the way asleep, and she makes a soft little snuffling noise and starts drooling onto his shirt. 

"Aw, gross, Lucy," Ray whispers, making a face, but he doesn't get up. He doesn't want to wake her. 

*

"No, Ma, we're not having a party," Ray says. "What, you want to go explaining this to everybody in the neighbourhood?" 

"But Raimondo, people will talk!" 

"And what, telling them the whole story will make them stop talking? Yeah, that sounds real likely." Ray shakes his head. "Not yet, okay? It's too soon." Ray's pretty sure that he's not ever going to be ready to talk about most of what happened in Vegas, but right now, he'll take any kind of break he can get. 

Ma's face softens and she pats his cheek. "Such a good, brave boy. I am always so proud of you." She wouldn't be, if she knew everything he'd done while he was under, if she knew how much of that he'd brought back with him. But in his Ma's world, he went to Vegas to be a hero, like some soldier going off to fight the good fight, and all she sees now are the news stories about the bad guys he brought down. He doesn't know how she's making that jive with Lucia's sudden appearance, but denial has always been one of her strong suits. 

"Thanks, Ma," Ray mumbles, and gets the hell out of the kitchen.

Frannie's already been to the one-hour photo, and she and Maria are cooing over the stack of pictures from earlier that afternoon. Lucia's playing with a bunch of blocks on the living room rug, babbling quietly to herself. 

"Ray! Come and look at the pictures. We're trying to pick out which ones you should send to Fraser." 

"She looks the same in all of them," Ray says. "Just pick one." But he comes over to look anyway. There's one of Nicci and Ma and Lucia that's pretty adorable, and one kind of close up of Lucia making this kind of surprised but happy face, smiling at someone out of the frame. 

"You get copies of these so Ma can frame them?" He's thinking about putting a couple of them on the shelf above his bed, with the pictures of Maria's wedding and Frannie's graduation and all the other family photos. 

"The whole roll, in triplicate," Frannie says, grinning at him. They get to the ones of him holding Lucia, and some of them actually came out pretty well. 

"Definitely send this one to Fraser," Frannie says, pulling out one that she'd snapped when Ray hadn't realised she was still taking pictures. Lucia's looking straight at the camera, all serious, and Ray's looking down at her, not quite smiling, but like he's maybe just about to. Ray sets aside that one and another of Lucia by herself to send. 

Lucia's gotten bored with the blocks, and is sort of inching her way across the rug towards a pile of David's dinosaur figurines lying abandoned on the other side of the room. 

"Go play with her," Maria orders, jabbing her elbow into Ray's ribs. Ray remembers Gia learning to crawl after those same dinosaurs, and puts a few of them down a couple of feet to the left of Lucia's grasping fingers. Lucia flails around a little and gives him a pleading look. 

"Start practising saying no to that face right now," Maria advises, laughing. 

Ray's not so good with kids this little--with Maria's, he mostly stayed out of the way until they were out of diapers--but Fraser'd been around a lot when Gia was this age, and Ray remembers him crawling around on the floor with the baby, saying things like, "Well done! Never underestimate the utility of alternative modes of locomotion." Even though his idea of baby talk was kind of weird, Fraser was great with kids, so Ray gives it a shot, trying to do what Fraser would do in this situation if he were normal and American and had a smaller vocabulary.

Ray cheers Lucia on, sort of pretending like he's at one of David's ball games, and she gives him a big, joyful grin and crows with delight when she finally gets her hands on the T-rex. Ray grins back, and a haphazard bolt of joy zings through him. It lights up all the corners of him that are dark with fear and self-loathing and regret, and for just a second, he's not anybody but Ray Vecchio. 

*

The normal level of chaos at a Vecchio family dinner means that the addition of a baby really doesn't make much difference, even when Lucia starts banging her spoon on the tray of her high chair and babbling emphatically at Ray, probably about how much she hates mashed sweet potatoes. Ray can't blame her. 

"Okay, okay. Cool it, _bellezza_. I'll get you a bottle." 

Lucia cranes her head around, trying to watch him go into the kitchen, her cheerful noise trailing off into something plaintive, like she's trying to remind him that she's still here.

"I'll be right back," Ray promises her from the doorway. He's halfway to the fridge when Lucia goes from fussing to full on wailing, and that familiar, awful feeling of panic goes shuddering through him. She's fine, everything is fine, but the part of Ray that knows that is lost underneath the jackhammer pounding of his heart and the sudden lack of air in the room. He finds himself back in the dining room and picking her up before he'd even realised he was moving. 

"You can come with me," he says, and hey, he sounds pretty good. He flashes Ma his best sheepish, what-can-you-do smile, hoping it comes off as the macho patriarch crazy about his little girl and not just plain crazy. Lucia clutches her fists in his shirt and Ray heats up the bottle one-handed. He takes a little longer than is strictly necessary, giving them both a chance to calm down some. 

"We can do this," Ray tells her. "We just need some practice." 

After dinner, Tony puts the ball game on in the living room, turned up loud to drown out the sound of the kids playing. Maria yells at him to turn it down and sends the kids to get ready for school tomorrow. Frannie's doing some kind of homework for the Academy, and Ma's pulled out her knitting. It's about as peaceful as the house ever gets. Ray hangs up the bouncy swing in the dining room doorway and pops Lucia into it, so she can see everything that's going on in the living room and be close enough not to freak out while Ray sits at the table and tries to figure out what to put in Fraser's letter.

He wants to tell Fraser how hard all of this is, how half the time he feels like he's undercover as himself and doing a piss-poor job of it, how he hates letting his family down, how he doesn't have any idea how he and Lucia are going to make it through the week, let alone the next seventeen years. Most of all, he wants to beg Fraser to come back, to come help him. Save him, like Fraser was so good at doing. 

But he doesn't. He winds up just writing Lucia's name and the date on the back of the pictures and sticking them into an envelope, addressing it to Fraser's detachment, and slapping six stamps on it. Fraser will write back, even though Ray didn't really give him anything to reply to, and by then, maybe Ray will have some idea what to say. 

*

"She wants to watch baseball," Gia tells Ray seriously, when Lucia starts kicking her feet and shouting emphatic nonsense into the living room. Which, for all Ray knows, might be true. So they sack out on the couch and watch the Tigers lose, until Lucia starts rubbing her eyes and whining.

"Do you need any help with her?" Ma asks, looking hopeful, but Ray shakes his head. 

"Nah, I think I can handle a solo reading of _Good Night Moon_ ," he says. 

Lucia isn't particularly interested in the book, which it turns out is kind of stupid anyway, so Ray gives up after a couple of pages, switching off the lamp and just sitting there with her in the dark. In the hall, he can hear Maria's kids crashing around as she herds them towards their beds. Ray tries to imagine doing the same school night routine with Lucia in four or five years, and can't. The future is just this huge, terrifying void. He can't even imagine just a few months down the road, to things like her first steps and her first word. But after Vegas, Ray's got not thinking about the future down to an art-form. 

Lucia protests when Ray finally puts her down in her crib, and he gives her a quick, awkward kiss on the forehead. 

"'Night, Lucy. Sweet dreams, okay?" 

She whines a little when he turns to go, sitting up to peer out at him through the slats of the crib. Ray leaves the door cracked when he leaves, and he can hear her starting to cry before he's even halfway down the hall.

Maria pops her head out of Nicci's room. "Let her cry for a little while," she orders. "I know it's hard, but you can't keep dropping everything and picking her up every time she gets upset."

Ray knows she's right, but he can't do it, he can't walk away. 

"Look at the week she's having," Ray tries. "Cut her some slack."

Maria gives him a look that says they both know it's not Lucia who's getting cut any slack here, and says, "I've done this three times, Ray. I'm just trying to help."

All Ray can think of is what the Bookman would say--what he would _do_ \--to somebody who talked to him that way, who ever suggested to his face that he maybe wasn't completely competent. Doesn't matter that it's Maria, who's been talking to Ray that way for practically as long as she's been talking; Armando Langoustini didn't have any sisters. That scene flashes across Ray's mind in technicolour, and he feels like he's going to throw up. In the nursery, Lucia's wailing like she's being tortured.

Ray's whole body is urging him to run, get out, get away, crank up his piece-of-shit car and drive until he runs out of road, let somebody else live this life he's come back to, because he sure as hell can't. For one wild second, he thinks about calling Kowalski and asking him if maybe he'd like the old gig back, since he'd done such a bang up job the first time. Can't offer you the crazy Canadian partner anymore, but how about a traumatised infant, that sound like a good deal? 

"Jesus." Ray scrubs his hands over his face. "Maria, I can't--" 

"Okay, okay," Maria says, giving him that worried "please don't have a nervous breakdown right here in front of me," look that is starting to be way too familiar. Lucia doesn't stop crying when Ray picks her up, but it loses some of that awful, terrified edge. He bounces her gently, and hopes she can't tell how close he is to losing it. 

"I got it," Ray tells Maria, so she'll stop with the goddamn look. "It's fine." Maria opens her mouth to argue. "I said, it's fine." Ray tries to put a little of the Bookman in it, just enough to make it clear he's in control here. Maria takes a step back, giving him a hard look. 

"You really need to get your act together, Ray," she says, and goes back into Nicci's room, closing the door behind her. 

_Sure, piece of cake,_ Ray thinks bitterly, and has to bite his lip to keep down the swell of hysterical laughter that rises up in his throat. He rubs his cheek against Lucia's hair and tries to remember how to breathe.

By the time Ray finally makes it into the living room to bully Tony into taking the portable crib upstairs so that he doesn't have to put Lucia down, he's feeling okay. He's got a working plan, his hands aren't shaking, his head's clear. But then Tony just does like Ray says, with the "yes, boss," implied so loud it practically echoes, and Ma can't even look at him. 

Ray puts Lucia down in the portable crib next to his bed, and lies awake most of the night listening to her sigh and mumble in her sleep and wondering how many more days like this one he can stand.

*

On Wednesday, Kowalski shows up for dinner. Ray's in the middle of an argument with Frannie, trying to convince her that it will do her absolutely zero good for him to help her study for her comp exam coming up. 

"You know how long it's been since I took that exam?" Ray says. He's holding Lucia, who's getting into the spirit of the whole thing, flailing her arms around and doing her best to drown everybody else out. If anybody still had doubts about whether she really was a Vecchio, this oughtta be enough to take care of them. 

"But you're still a cop!" Frannie wails. "You have citations and things!"

"Yeah," Ray says, even though both of them are because of Ray's complete inability to say no to Fraser and his crazy. "And I know the answers that will get perps into custody and keep me and my crazy partner from getting killed. What I don't know is all the by-the-book, PC crap the academy wants to hear. You want help passing comps, talk to Elaine."

Which is when Kowalski walks in. He's holding a bouquet of flowers--purple and white lilacs, Ma's favourites--and a big white bakery box. 

"You forget how to knock, Stanley?" Ray snaps. Kowalski opens his mouth to snap back, and then he actually looks at Ray and just sort of freezes, staring at him and Lucia. It's weird, but nobody else even seems to notice. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Ma says, smacking Ray's shoulder. She grabs Kowalski's face and kisses him twice on both cheeks. "You don't knock, Ray, you're family." Kowalski is, hilariously, blushing. 

"These are for you," he mumbles, offering Ma the flowers. "And I brought _sernik_ from Mrs Wilczynski's." 

Ma pats his bright red cheek, yelling for Frannie to bring her Tiffany vase from the parlour for the lilacs. She oohs and ahhhs over the cheesecake too, like she doesn't make the best ricotta cheesecakes in the neighbourhood, and fusses over how thin Kowalski is and how bad he is for waiting so long to visit her. Ray just kind of stands there awkwardly while Lucia peers at Kowalski and his experimental hair.

"Raimondo! Why aren't you showing off my newest granddaughter, huh?" 

"Kowalski, Lucia. Lucia, the guy who watches your old man's back." 

"Hey there," Kowalski says. He makes Fraser's puffin-face at her, startling a snort of laughter out of Ray. Good to know he's not the only one Fraser's weirdness rubbed off on. 

Lucia's giggling too, and she tries to grab the bracelet on Kowalski's wrist when he reaches out like he's offering her his hand to shake. 

"I brought a present for her," Kowalski says, letting himself be drawn into a game of tug-o-war over the bracelet. "Left it in the GTO." 

"You didn't have to--" Ray starts, but Kowalski waves it away. 

"It's nothing big, just a stuffed animal." It's weird, standing this close to him. Ray can smell the fruity, slightly chemical tang of his hair gel and the chocolate and coffee he probably had instead of lunch at the station. Usually, the only time they're in each other's space like this is because somebody's probably about to start shooting at them, if they're not already. 

"You wanna hold her?" Ray says, mostly for an excuse to get out of Kowalski's personal space, and Kowalski _beams_ at him. That smile could almost give Fraser's a run for its money. Ray thinks about that stakeout a couple of weeks ago, when Huey and Dewey were running late and he and Kowalski were both going cross-eyed with exhaustion and started talking about Stella and Ange, and why things just hadn't worked out. Kowalski'd wanted kids, Stella hadn't. Ray wonders if maybe Kowalski's wishing he was the one the FBI decided to drop a baby onto out of the blue. 

Lucia looks doubtfully over her shoulder at Ray as he hands her off, but Kowalski doesn't seem bothered. He stands so she can see that Ray's not going anywhere and lets her grab the sunglasses out of his breast pocket and stick them in her mouth. 

"See, I'm not so bad," Kowalski tells her. "Let's go and get your present." Ray tags along behind them. 

The present turns out to be a toy dog the size of a teddy bear, black and white with blue eyes. Lucia rubs her face against the plush fur. 

"Let me guess," Ray says. "It's supposed to be Dief?" Kowalski ducks his head and grins. 

"Yeah. I kinda thought you'd get a kick out of it too." 

Ray rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth are twitching with a badly suppressed smile. 

Back inside, Kowalski cheerfully hands Lucia back to Ray for a diaper-change and goes to talk to Frannie about how things are going at the Academy. By the time Ray comes back downstairs, the kids have figured out that Kowalski's here, and they're all yelling "Uncle Ray, Uncle Ray!" each one trying to be the first to get his attention. Kowalski lets Nicci show him her science project, practises a couple of boxing combinations with David, and listens to Gia telling some long and incomprehensible story about her new doll. Ray stands at the bottom of the stairs, holding Lucia and her wolf, and feeling more like a stranger in his own home than ever. 

For more than a year, it was Kowalski who was here, consoling his niece when her bean plants didn't sprout, picking his nephew up from tee-ball, playing games with the _bambina_. They'd all been so little when he left, the twins just starting school, and Ray hasn't gotten back into that groove yet. No wonder they're so excited to see Kowalski; they probably missed him a lot more these last couple of months than they'd ever missed Ray.

Ma's calling everybody to the table, and Ray tries to shake off his funk. Everybody's mostly paying attention to Kowalski, and after two days of everybody staring at him and Lucia, it's nice to get a break. He feeds Lucia her strained carrots and listens to Kowalski talking about nuclear submarines and parachuting Mounties. It's still weird as hell having Kowalski here, with his stupid hair and his annoying voice and his ugly clothes, somehow managing to fit in so much better than Ray, and Ray wants to hate him for it, he really, really does. But Kowalski will look up at him every so often and grin, like they're sharing some kind of secret, or he'll make a face at Lucia so that she giggles, and Ray doesn't know how all of this makes him feel, but it's not anything in the same ballpark as hate. 

After dinner, Ray asks Kowalski if he wants to stick around and watch the game without Ma even having to glare at him. It's a low-stakes game, Atlanta at St. Louis, so it's safe. Kowalski doesn't spend much time watching it though. When he's not talking with one of the adults, his attention is pretty much all on Lucia.

And now that she's decided she can trust him, Lucia's turning out to be a pretty big fan of Kowalski's, probably because he doesn't have any qualms about acting like an idiot to make her laugh. He holds her up and blows noisy raspberries on her belly and pretends to make her toy wolf talk in this squeaky, high-pitched voice, accompanied by ridiculous faces, and Lucia eats all of that up. 

Ray would be lying if he said he wasn't kind of jealous, but he's the one that changes her diapers and puts her to bed and makes sure that she's safe, and that's the stuff that matters. Anybody can make stupid faces. And when she starts to get tired, she looks around for Ray, wanting to be held. 

Kowalski doesn't stick around much longer after that, and Ray walks him to the door, on his way to take Lucia upstairs. 

"You got a great kid there, Vecchio," Kowalski tells him. 

"Yeah," Ray says, running his hand over her hair. "Thanks." 

"You're gonna be back at the 2-7 on Monday?" Kowalski asks, and Ray nods. "Okay. I'll, uh, I'll see you. And hey, Vecchio, you should call Fraser. He's worried about you." 

"I sent him a letter," Ray says lamely, even though the pictures didn't really count, and hadn't been delivered yet anyway. 

"Yeah, well call him," Kowalski says. "'Night, Vecchio. 'Night, pipsqueak." 

*

Ray picks up the phone to call Fraser three times the next day, and every time he hangs it up before it can start to ring. If Fraser's so worried, it's not like he doesn't have Ray's phone number. He could call! But Fraser wouldn't, probably would think he was intruding on Ray's bonding time with his progeny or something, and so this one is on Ray. He's kind of afraid that he's just going to give Fraser an actual reason to be worried, because Ray Vecchio these days is exactly not the picture of a happy, well-balanced adult, but Fraser's his best friend, and he deserves better than Ray's been giving him these last couple of months. 

So on Friday, Ray finally manages to stay on the line as it rings and is answered by another Mountie who puts him on hold for Fraser. 

"Ray!" Fraser sounds thrilled to hear from him, and Ray feels an enormous dorky grin spreading over his face. God, he's missed Fraser. _Misses_ Fraser, hates that he's three thousand miles away. Chicago without Fraser feels empty and wrong, and maybe some of that is how Ray's changed, but he's pretty sure it's mostly because Fraser's gone. 

"Ray? Ray? Ray?" 

"Sorry, Fraser. Interference or something," Ray lies. "What did you say?" 

"I was asking after Lucia," Fraser says. 

"She's great," Ray says. "She's--I don't know, Fraser, she's a baby. She's cute and she sleeps a lot and she goes through way too many diapers." 

Fraser chuckles, and Ray pictures the crinkles framing his eyes. "I hope the transition hasn't been too taxing for either of you," Fraser says, and yeah, Kowalski wasn't lying when he'd said Fraser was worried, even if he's trying not to show it too much.

"It hasn't exactly been a cakewalk," Ray says, trying to play it cool for Fraser so he can stop worrying. "I mean, Ma and the girls, they try to help, you know, but--" 

So much for playing it cool, because all those things he can't talk about, not even with Benny, are crowding up in the back of his throat, and Ray has to clench his jaw til his teeth creak to keep everything from spilling out. 

If Fraser were here, he'd be giving Ray that steady, empathetic look, the one that says Ray's not alone, that Fraser's right there and he cares and he'll do anything he can to help. But that look doesn't work over the phone, and Ray can feel Fraser struggling to figure out what to say. 

"Christ," Ray groans, covering his face with his hands. His voice is hoarse, like he's about to start crying. "I'm sorry, Benny, I shouldn't have--"

"No, it's all right," Fraser says, all gentle and reasonable, like he's talking to a witness who's about to lose it. "Ray, you're still recovering from an intensely stressful experience, and--" 

"Look, just stop, okay?" Ray says. "I don't want to talk about this."

"That's perfectly understandable," Fraser says quickly. "Perhaps you might seek out a professional instead, a certified therapist or psychiatrist affiliated with the FBI?" 

"You mean somebody like the reentry guy who declared me fit to resume active duty?" Ray snorts. And okay, maybe that wasn't exactly the guy's fault, because hey, Ray's an undercover professional. But no way was Ray going to lay all of this out in front of some over-educated, condescending hypocrite and then spend hours talking about his feelings. He'd probably come out crazier than he went in.

"What about a priest?" Fraser tries. "Someone outside of your local parish, perhaps?" 

Ray's thought about that one too, a lot. But he'd stopped praying while he was under. That was just another piece of Ray Vecchio that hadn't survived being the Bookman. You couldn't take people out to the desert and leave them there, six feet under, and make it back to town for your dinner plans at the Bellagio, then go to bed that night on your thousand thread-count silk sheets and try to talk to God about anything. At least, Ray couldn't. He hasn't been a good Catholic since his altar boy days, but before Vegas, he'd at least done okay with the big stuff. Now though, he could be saying rosaries til he's eighty and still not make a dent in the penance he's racked up. 

"What part of 'I don't want to talk about it' isn't translating, Fraser?" Ray says. "Not just with you, with anybody." 

"Understood," Fraser says. 

Ray doesn't know what to say to that, so he just hangs up before things can get any worse. 

*

Everybody pretends not to see Ray when he comes into the station nearly an hour late on Monday morning. Well, everybody except the new civilian aide, who tries to give him a little tentative smile, and Kowalski, who glares at him. 

"You wanna explain to me why the Mountie's trying to put me on some kind of _suicide watch_ for you, Vecchio?" 

Ray's already having a bad morning. He'd figured Lucia was pretty much gonna be okay being left with Ma for the day, because she's gotten a little calmer about letting Ray out of her sight, although she's still sleeping in the portable crib next to his bed. Except that this morning, she'd woken up whiny and clinging and didn't even want to be put down into her high-chair. 

Meanwhile, Ma'd been trying to cook breakfast for all of them, the kids were running around freaking out about missing homework and trying to find their shoes, Tony'd been trying to read the paper at the table, and Maria and Frannie were fighting over the coffeepot. Lucia managed to get more formula and fortified cereal on Ray's shirt than into her stomach, and she started sobbing like her heart was breaking when he put her down in the bouncy swing to run upstairs and change. 

She'd still been going strong when Ray came back, still doing up the buttons and without a tie. He couldn't just leave her like that, because then she'd probably spend the entire day thinking he was gone for good and she was about to be put on another plane to God-knows-where.

"Hey, I'm just going to work, Lucy. Your buddy Kowalski needs me to keep him out of trouble." Ray'd knelt down so he was on her level, takes her little flailing fists in his hands. "I'll be back tonight, okay? It's gonna be fine." 

But Lucia wasn't buying it, not even when Ray'd picked her up and walked her around the dining room, still talking to her. 

"Raimondo! Why aren't you at work? Come here, _carissima_ ," Ma said, scooping Lucia neatly out of Ray's arms. "Go, before they give your job to somebody who will actually do it!" She'd herded Ray out the door, ignoring his protests, and the sound of Lucia's betrayed crying echoed inside his head all the way to the station. 

So Ray is definitely not in the mood to deal with Kowalski being a drama queen this morning. 

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Ray snarls, trying to push past Kowalski on his way to the break room to get a cup of coffee and a pecan swirl out of the vending machine, because he didn't even manage to get breakfast before Ma kicked him out. 

But Kowalski grabs him by the arm and drags him down the opposite hallway--towards the supply closet, Ray thinks for one wild second, and his heart gives a painful, anticipatory thump, conditioned by too many years of getting his hopes up every time Fraser thought they needed to chat in private. But this is Kowalski, not Fraser, and they pass right by the closet and into the men's room. 

"Am-scray," Kowalski growls at the poor rookie at the urinal and drags Ray into a stall. 

"What the fuck," Ray says again. "Kowalski, are you trying to get punched in the face?" 

"I'm trying to figure out what you said to Fraser that scared him so bad he called me to ask if he needed to come down here," Kowalski says. "Are you okay? Because you looked okay last week. Kinda sleep-deprived, maybe, but not so broken you needed Fraser to come all the way down from the Northwest Areas and put you back together."

Ray knows that if Kowalski told Fraser that was in fact what Ray needed, he would be on the next prop-plane south. Knowing that feels pretty good, actually, but no way is Ray going to let Kowalski see that. 

"I'm _fine,_ Stanley," Ray snaps. "What, you wanna see the re-entry shrink's seal of approval on it?" 

Kowalski, the asshole, laughs in his face. "You think I haven't faked my way through re-entry psych evals, Vecchio? I know as well as you do that doesn't mean shit." 

"Yeah, well the CPD thinks it does, and I got my piece of paper says my bag of marbles is intact," Ray says. "Not that I can see how it's any of your business." 

For about half a second, Kowalski looks hurt, before his face goes hard and pissed off. "Because you're my _partner_ , you asshole."

Ray waits for the rest of it, the part about how it's Kowalski's ass on the line if Ray's too busy having a mental breakdown to watch his back. But Kowalski just glares at him defiantly. 

"You're right, Welsh'd have a hell of a time finding anyone else willing to put up with you," Ray mumbles, looking away. "I see why you got a vested interest." 

"Fuck you," Kowalski says without any real heat. "Anyway, I was thinking we should go check out that arson down in Englewood."

"Okay," Ray says. "But I gotta have coffee first." 

In the break room, he gets a bag of M&Ms from the vending machine and tosses it underhand to Kowalski, as a peace offering.

*

"Man, that was some smooth talking right there," Kowalski says, turning a little dance-step in the hallway outside of interrogation. "Punk didn't stand a chance." He's grinning that happy little kid grin, and Ray catches himself smiling back. There's still more of Langoustini in the interrogation room than there is of the old Ray Vecchio, and it makes him feel itchy and uncomfortable, but Kowalski's enthusiasm is contagious. 

"You want to go grab something to eat, celebrate a little?" Kowalski says. "Ma's keeping the kiddo, right?" 

Ray kind of does want to go grab a burger with Kowalski and gloat over wringing out that confession, see if that makes it feel more like he's cleaning up the streets of Chicago than like he's intimidating the competition in Vegas. But he's already getting that jumpy, anxious feeling, the one that says he's done his job and now he should be at home with Lucia, making sure everything's okay, especially after the way things went this morning.

"Yeah, but it's her bingo night," Ray lies. "Can't make her miss that, you know?" 

Kowalski's giving him a funny look, and Ray realises too late that Kowalski'd probably driven Ma to bingo night more than once while he was being Ray, and he knows that it's on Tuesdays. 

"Hey, maybe another time," Kowalski says with an easy shrug. "Later, Vecchio." 

They spend the next two days fighting their way out from underneath all of the paperwork from the arson case, and wind up staying late Wednesday because Welsh is going to nail their asses to the floor if it's not all on the new ASA's desk bright and early tomorrow morning. At 7:42--Ray's checking his cellphone, making sure it's on and working, just in case--Kowalski says, "Get out of here, I'll finish up." 

Ray puts up a token protest, but Kowalski says, "Hey, I got nobody but the turtle waiting on me to get home. Go read your kid a bedtime story." 

"You want me to write down how to spell accelerant for you before I go?" Ray says with a grin, and Kowalski flips him off. 

*

Saturday morning, Ray's in the nursery, hiding from the chaos preceding the first little league game of the year under the excuse of trying to wrestle Lucia into a clean outfit. 

Down the hall, David wails, "Dad, where are my lucky socks?" 

"How should I know?" Tony yells back. "I'm busy, kid, just grab a pair of socks and get in the car." 

Ray rolls his eyes and waits for it. David searches a little, then calls, "Uncle Ray! I can't find my lucky socks!" 

Ray's got no idea where David's lucky socks are. He didn't even know the kid _had_ lucky socks. He's about to poke his head out into the hall and say as much when he hears Kowalski's voice. 

"Okay, champ, calm down, I'll help you find 'em." 

What the fuck, why is Kowalski in his house at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning? The occasional dinner is one thing; Ma's fond of the guy, likes to make sure he's not starving to death, and Ray's okay with that, figures Kowalski'd earned it after spending more than a year keeping Ray's life going. But this, waltzing in out of the blue, like he belongs, like there's still a Ray Vecchio shaped hole that needs him to fill it--that Ray is most definitely not okay with. 

"You don't wash them, right?" Kowalski's saying. "'Cause they're your lucky ones. Did you check in the pocket on your duffle? Maybe you hid them there so they wouldn't accidentally get washed after your last practice." 

Plus, he's a bad influence on the kids. 

Ray jams a hat onto Lucia's head and goes to kick Kowalski out before he can pass on any more of his bad habits. 

Unfortunately, Frannie intercepts him.

"Be nice," she hisses, straightening Lucia's hat. 

"What do you mean be nice?" Ray demands. Lucia gives him a worried look, and Ray tries to tone it down. "He's the one showing up in my house uninvited, trying to pretend he's still living my life, and you want me to be nice?" 

Frannie rolls her eyes at him. "He's not uninvited! I invited him! I thought he'd want to see David's first game. He was great with the kids while you were gone, really connected with them." 

"Probably on account of how he's got the maturity level of a twelve year old," Ray mutters, making Frannie glare at him. 

"Right, because you're so mature, whining like somebody else got picked to be captain of the basketball team. Would you just go help David find his lucky socks so we can get this play on the road?" Frannie holds her arms out for Lucia, who lunges for her with a squeal. Lucia's still a little bit wary of letting Ray out of her sight, but if Frannie or Ma are around to coo over her, she's pretty happy to bask in the attention. 

Kowalski's on his hands and knees in David's room, looking under the dresser. "Not here," he reports. David's pacing back and forth, practically wringing his hands.

"Did you maybe try looking in the dresser where they're supposed to be?" Ray asks, and Kowalski jumps a little. 

"Christ, Vecchio, you wanna try not giving me a fu--freaking heart attack?" 

Ray tries not to wince. He hadn't meant for that to come out sounding so much like the Bookman. Armando'd been real fond of catching people off guard like that, and as much as Ray hates it, it's a hard habit to break.

"Watch your mouth in front of the kids," Ray says, and Kowalski flushes. 

Ray roots around in David's sock drawer and pulls out a pair of blue and white baseball socks. 

"Ma _washed_ them," David says, sounding horrified. He looks at Kowalski anxiously. "Does that mean they're not lucky any more?" 

"Uhm," Kowalski says, shooting Ray a look over the kid's head. "Well, it's your first game, right, so uh--" 

"Washing them makes them luckier," Ray says, glaring at Kowalski. 

"Why?"

"Because I said so," Ray says. "Now put them on and go get in the car, would you?" 

"I wanna ride with other Uncle Ray," David says. "His car is cool!" 

"Just pick a car and get in it," Ray says wearily. 

The upshot of Kowalski showing up is that Ray and Lucia have the crappy Ford to themselves, which is good, because fifteen more minutes of his family's yelling would probably have driven Ray around the bend for good. Lucia's still pretty charged up on everybody's excitement, babbling away to herself in the backseat, but she doesn't seem to mind that Ray's not paying much attention. 

They get there after Maria's already staked out a place right up against the fence along the first base line. A couple of the other families are giving them dirty looks. Kowalski's sprawled out on the grass, telling Gia some kind of story that involves a lot of arm-waving and explosion sound effects. Ray tries to ignore him.

Ray doesn't like being right out in the open like this, but it's way past time that he got used to it again. He puts Lucia down on the blanket with a bunch of her toys and tries to relax, but in the back of his head, he's cataloguing the fastest way back to the car and the most vulnerable angles on where they're sitting. He wishes he'd thought to check out the flimsy bleachers behind home plate and the little plywood concessions stand before he sat down. 

The grass around them starts to fill up with other families crowding in, and Ray has a hard time sitting still. There's too much going on that he can't see, and too much noise, and too many guys with dark hair and sunglasses. The skin between his shoulders keeps prickling, like any second someone's going to shove the barrel of a gun up against his back.

"What's the matter with you?" Frannie says, jabbing him with her elbow. "Quit twitching." Kowalski's finished his story and he keeps glancing at Ray out of the corner of his eye, and then pretending like he's not whenever Ray catches him. It's not exactly helping Ray's nerves.

Lucia's been keeping busy trying to escape off the edge of the blanket and eat the grass, but when the first kid goes up to bat and everybody starts yelling and cheering, she spooks and bursts into tears. Kowalski twitches forward, like he's about to pick her up, but then freezes and settles back, trying to pretend like he hadn't moved and was totally focused on the game. 

"I think we're going to head out," Ray says to the group at large. But David's bolting across the outfield, and nobody's paying much attention to Ray. 

Except for Kowalski, who says, "Hey, Vecchio--" but Ray's already turning away, pretending like he hadn't heard. He tries not to look like he's hurrying on the way back to the car.

Lucia calms down pretty much as soon as they're away from the crowds, and back at the house, Ray figures they both could use some more fresh air, taking advantage of having the back yard to themselves. Lucia's too little for the swing set, but Ray spreads a blanket out on the grass, and they roll a ball back and forth for a while. Lucia tries to eat a ladybug that lands on her arm, and Ray gives her a little bouquet of dandelions, until she tries to eat those too. 

It's nice, the kind of thing Ray'd imagined having kids would be like, before Maria had the twins. He wishes a little guiltily that it could be like this more often. 

Kowalski's GTO rumbles into the driveway, and here where Kowalski can't be smug about it, Ray takes a moment to appreciate how sweet she sounds. Nothing on the Riv, of course, but still a really damn nice car. God, he misses his car. 

"But I guess even if I could find another one, that's money that should probably be going in your college fund, huh?" he says to Lucia, poking her belly. She giggles. 

Ray can hear everybody talking as they pour into the house, just as noisy as they were before the game, but at least now it's happy noise instead of stressed out and annoyed noise. 

As soon as Ray brings Lucia inside, Ma and the girls all descend on them, wanting to know why he'd left, didn't he care that his nephew had hit a homerun and helped win the game, there wasn't something wrong with the baby, was there?

"She didn't like being around all those people," Ray says pointedly, trying to push past them. They keep talking, like he hadn't even opened his mouth, and Ray contemplates turning and making a break for it, but Ma's in between him and the door. 

"Hey, Vecchio, you got a minute?" Kowalski says. "The Goat's shifting kind of rough, you think you could take a look at her transmission?" Ray blinks at him, and Kowalski gives him a significant look. Jeez, why did they ever pick him for undercover? The guy is almost as unsubtle as Fraser. 

"Yeah," Ray says. "Be right there." 

There's nothing wrong with the Goat's transmission, and if there was, Ray's pretty sure Kowalski could fix it himself. But Ma and the girls don't know that, and Ray's grateful for the excuse to get out of there for a minute. 

"Hey, maybe I should take her for a spin around the block," he says, when he gets out into the driveway, still carrying Lucia. Kowalski's got the hood popped, playing along with his own story. Ray's expecting Kowalski to refuse, but instead he just shrugs, smirking at Ray. 

"Okay," he says. "But you're either going to have to take the kid inside or put her carseat in the back, because no way am I letting you behind the wheel unsupervised." 

Well, no way is Ray going back into the house to face his Ma and sisters, so he passes Lucia to Kowalski and goes to wrestle her carseat out of the back of the Ford and into the GTO. 

"Fraser ever tell you about the time this lady left her baby in the backseat of the Riv?" Ray asks as he's strapping Lucia in. 

"Read a casefile about it," Kowalski says. "Sounded pretty nuts." 

Ray snorts. "Yeah. Man, you think all the women in the greater Chicago area had it bad for Fraser on a normal day, you shoulda seen them when he was holding a baby." 

Kowalski barks a laugh, reaching into the backseat to tickle Lucia. "Good thing he's up in the Yukon Territories now, huh, sweetheart? You're cute enough he'd probably be some kind of health and safety hazard if he went out in public holding you." 

Ray tries to laugh, but mostly he's thinking about how Fraser being up in the Arctic and not _here_ is pretty much the farthest thing he can think of from being a good thing. 

"You going to drive the car or what?" Kowalski says, in this kind of tight, strained voice, like maybe he hadn't meant to bring up how Fraser wasn't here, and now he was on the same page as Ray about how much thinking about that sucked. 

"Yeah, yeah, stop rushing me," Ray says, and eases out of the driveway. For a second, he wishes he'd taken Lucia inside, because this car is seriously powerful, and there's no way Ray's about to drive it the way it deserves to be driven, not with his daughter in the back seat. So he just enjoys the rumble of the engine and imagines how it would be, heading out of town and running the throttle wide open. 

Kowalski's smirking at him again.

"She handles pretty good," Ray says. "But just wait til I get another Riv that runs, then I'll show you what a classic car is supposed to be." 

"Hey, I drove the Riv," Kowalski says. "She wasn't anything special." 

"You really want to talk shit about that right now, Kowalski?" Ray growls, and Kowalski grins. 

"You should watch your language in front of the kid," he says primly, and Ray flips him off.

*

"Hey, you still owe me for that paperwork last week," Kowalski says on Monday, after they close up shop. "Wanna grab Chinese? There's this place Fraser--" he sort of stalls out for a second--"uh, anyway, they make a killer Mandarin duck." 

"Lee's," Ray says before he can stop himself. His gut twists at the memories of all the times he'd been there with Fraser, after that case with the FBI. No way in hell is he about to go there with Kowalski and spend the whole time thinking about him and Fraser going for dinner there, about Kowalski living his life the way Ray's forgotten how to do. "Can't, I told Ma I'd be home for supper tonight--she's making carbonara." 

For a second, this look flashes across Kowalski's face that reminds Ray of what it felt like watching Frankie Zuko popping wheelies on his shiny brand-new five-speed, while Ray was still begging Pop to buy him something that wasn't mostly rust and held together with superglue and prayers. But then it's gone, and Kowalski is all easy shrugs and snark.

"Yeah, well, you still owe me," he says. "Gonna collect sooner or later." 

Ray smirks at him, playing along. "I'm waiting to make sure the ASA doesn't shoot it all back to me covered in red ink first. See ya, Stanley." 

Frannie meets Ray at the door, waving a box. "Fraser sent Lucia a package," she says. And sure enough, the box is addressed to Miss Lucia Vecchio in Fraser's neat, old-fashioned handwriting. 

Ray heads into the kitchen, where Lucia's sitting in her high-chair while Ma cooks, distracting Nicci from her homework by throwing her toys onto the floor and yelling until Nicci retrieves them. 

"Hey, Lucy," Ray says, picking her up. "You being a pest?" Lucia flings down the ball she's holding and gives him an expectant look. Ray makes a face at her, and she giggles. "Yeah, you're real funny," he says, scooping the ball up on his way out of the kitchen.

"Where are you going?" Ma demands. "Dinner will be ready in ten minutes!" 

"She needs a new diaper," Ray calls over his shoulder. Possibly the single most useful parenting trick he's learned in the last couple of weeks is that no one is going to get in the way if they think they might be roped into changing a diaper. 

Lucia knows it's time for dinner, not bed, and she whines impatiently at Ray when he carries her upstairs and sits down with her in the middle of his mattress.

"I know, we'll go back down in a second," Ray says. "But your uncle Benny sent you something, you wanna see it?" 

The box is full of wood-shavings, and Ray makes a face when Lucia plunges both hands in and gets them everywhere. Underneath the wood-shavings, there's some kind of stick with an elaborately carved tube attached to it on a leather thong, and underneath that, there's a couple sheets of the blue onion-skin paper that Fraser writes letters on.

Ray pulls all of this out of the box, trying in vain to keep from getting more wood shavings all over the bed. 

_Dear Ray,  
Thank you kindly for the pictures. Lucia is indeed extremely cute, easily amongst the top five of all the babies of my admittedly somewhat limited acquaintance. I'm quite sure she is also a very charming baby, although a photograph is hardly adequate evidence for such an assumption. Nevertheless, I fully believe that to be the case, and I look forward to hearing more about her and also to further photographs. Enclosed in this parcel is a gift that I hope she will find both educational and entertaining, as well as a letter, which I would appreciate your reading to her on my behalf. _

_Things here in Inuvik are very quiet. There was some talk of a polar bear quite close to the town, but it turned out instead to be an elaborate prank being played by the Robinson boys on their younger sister. I believe Diefenbaker was somewhat disappointed; he has been complaining of boredom, although just last week I took him to a showing of_ The Death of a Lumberjack _at the community centre and allowed him to eat the lion's share of the popcorn._

_I haven't forgotten our recent phone conversation, and I hope you'll forgive me for alluding briefly to that topic which you made it clear you have no wish to discuss. But should you change your mind, I will listen, and try to help in whatever way I can. I really am very proud of you, Ray._

_Please convey my warmest regards to your mother and the rest of your family._

_Your friend,  
B. Fraser_

_PS. Diefenbaker also sends his regards, and asks that you mention him to Ante._

Ray rubs his thumb over the line where Fraser had written his name, tries to imagine Fraser saying it, telling Ray that he was proud of him. Tries to imagine the look on his face. But he can't, because Ray'd killed people, hurt people, and no way Fraser could be proud of that. No way he could look Ray in the eye and tell him he was proud of him for being the person he'd been in Vegas. And yeah, Benny doesn't lie, except when he does, mostly to himself. He probably thought it was true when he wrote it down, but Ray knows better.

He crumples up the thin blue paper and stuffs it back in with the rest of the woodshavings. Fraser's letter to Lucia is a lot longer than the one he wrote to Ray, paragraphs and paragraphs telling her what her name meant in Latin and about some scientist chick named Lucia who experimented with electrocuting dead animals. Then he gets into the present he sent her, which is apparently called an _ajagaak_ and is made out of caribou bone--Ray makes a face and pulls it out of Lucia's mouth--and is supposed to improve her hand-eye coordination. There's this whole story game that goes along with it, which Ray reads, even though he doesn't care and Lucia can't understand it, because Fraser would probably know if he didn't.

Fraser wraps it up with an Inuit story, of course, something about a herd of musk ox that he'd seen being attacked by wolves and how they'd circled around the calf in the group and kept it safe. Ray's pretty sure he gets where Fraser's going with that, but the metaphor doesn't work as well when Fraser's thousands of miles away.

Ray feels raw and exhausted, and for a second, he really, fiercely misses Vegas and that nine thousand square foot house where there weren't any yelling family members and the wet bar was better stocked than half the liquor stores in Chicago. Pretty much the last thing he wants to do right now is sit through another noisy dinner with his family and field their questions about Fraser. 

He pulls out his cell phone, dialing Kowalski's number real fast, before he can talk himself out of it. Lucia's kicking her feet impatiently and making grumpy noises. The phone rings four times before Kowalski finally picks up. 

"Kowalski." Ray can still hear the half-second hesitation of him remembering that he's using his own name now. 

"Hey," Ray says. "You still in the mood for Chinese?" 

"Sure," Kowalski says warily, after a pause that's just long enough to be awkward. "Delivery?" 

"Yeah," Ray says. "On me. Go ahead and call it in. Get me Mongolian beef. I'm bringing Lucia, that okay?" 

"Sure," Kowalski says again, and hangs up.

Everybody's already at the table, and Ma's already got a full plate set out in front of Ray's seat, and a bottle on the tray of Lucia's high chair. Ray grabs the bottle and sticks it in the diaper bag slung over his shoulder. 

"I gotta go see Kowalski about a thing," he says to Ma. 

"What, you take the baby along on police business now?" Ma retorts. 

"It's not a police thing," Ray says over his shoulder, and bolts. 

By now, Lucia's getting pretty fed up with being jerked around on dinner, and she starts crying when Ray puts her into her carseat. She's still crying when he parks the car in the alley behind Kowalski's apartment. Kowalski buzzes them up, and Ray climbs the stairs really, really slowly, because the last thing he wants to do is show up outside Kowalski's door halfway to a panic attack and holding a screaming infant. But Lucia's built up a pretty good head of steam, and when Kowalski opens the door, she's not showing any signs of calming down. Ray's feeling clammy and sick to his stomach, teeth chattering like a junkie jonesing for a hit. 

To Kowalski's credit, he doesn't slam the door on them. "Whoa, what's the matter, kiddo?" He waves them in and steers Ray directly to the couch. Ray fumbles in the diaper bag for the bottle with his free hand, and Kowalski just kind of stands there awkwardly, like he's torn between wanting to help and trying to pretend that none of this is happening.

Ray's hands are shaking too bad to get the lid off the bottle, and Kowalski reaches over and flips it off with his thumb. Lucia stops crying, and Ray's ears are ringing in the sudden quiet. He slumps back against Kowalski's ratty couch, trying and probably failing to look like he's not inching his way back from a meltdown.

Kowalski's door buzzer goes off, and Lucia jumps and gets formula up her nose, which makes her start crying again. 

"Hand her over," Kowalski says, obviously trying not to laugh. "You go deal with the delivery guy." 

Ray can handle that. He buzzes the guy up, pays him, and detours into Kowalski's kitchen to grab plates and something to drink. There's an actual layer of dust on Kowalski's stupid cow plates and when Ray opens the fridge, the only things in it are a half-empty case of Old Style and a crusty bottle of French's mustard. It's pathetic, but Ray can't exactly judge him, because if he were living somewhere like this instead of home with his Ma, the place would probably be at hazmat levels. 

In the living room, Kowalski's got Lucia lying in the crook of his knee, one hand helping her balance her bottle and the other making her toy wolf scamper along the back of the couch. She's watching it intently, grinning around the bottle and getting formula everywhere. 

"Put a bib on her already," Ray grumbles, setting cartons of rice and noodles on the coffee table. Kowalski rolls his eyes and tucks a napkin under Lucia's chin, making a silly face at her, apparently without even realising he's doing it. Ray's stomach does something wobbly and awkward, and he looks away quick, trying to cultivate an engrossing interest in his carton of pork-fried rice. 

Kowalski doesn't seem to notice. He reaches over Lucia for his own carton of rice, and winds up getting about half of it in his lap, trying to eat it one-handed. 

"Nah, I got her," he says, when Ray offers to take her back. "We're good." 

And except for the rice everywhere, they really are. Kowalski's face goes all soft and adoring when he looks at Lucia, and he doesn't even try to hide it. It doesn't make any sense, because she's just a random baby--it's not like she's Kowalski's niece or god-daughter or anything. But then, a lot of stuff Kowalski does doesn't make sense, and it's not like it's hurting anybody. Ray figures Lucia probably deserves all the affection she can get right now. 

There's this long, awkward silence, during which Kowalski drops more rice on his lap and Ray fidgets with his chopsticks, and Lucia ignores both of them. In desperation, Ray grabs the remote off the table. 

"Cubs losing tonight?" he asks, and Kowalski scowls at him. But even watching Kowalski watch his crappy team lose is better than sitting at home, trying to remember what the old Ray Vecchio used to do on Monday nights after dinner, and having the game on makes it normal, makes it okay. Even if Ray really, really hates the Cubs.

By the second inning, Kowalski's yelling at the TV like maybe they'll hear him over at Wrigley Field and clean up their game. At first Lucia looks kind of worried, but Kowalski turns her around so she can see the TV and explains to her very seriously everything that's wrong with the Cubs' current line-up, and the next time he starts ranting, Lucia figures everything's okay and starts waving her fists and yelling too. 

"You are not allowed to turn her into a Cubs fan, Stanley," Ray says. "She's better than that." 

By the seventh inning stretch, Kowalski's slumped into a dejected sprawl and Lucia's fast asleep, drooling all over his t-shirt. 

"I should get her home," Ray says, even though he's really not looking forward to dealing with Ma and the girls interrogating him like he's some two-bit criminal. 

Kowalski nods. "Yeah, okay." Lucia makes a sleepy noise when Kowalski stands up, curling her fingers in the fabric of his shirt. "Thanks for dinner, Vecchio."

"Hey, I owed you," Ray says. 

"Time to go home, pipsqueak," Kowalski says to Lucia, and kisses the top of her head. He gives Ray this brittle, defiant look, like he maybe expects Ray to chew him out for it. And maybe on a different day Ray would've at least mocked him, but his stomach is doing another round of those wobbly, awkward acrobatics, so he just rolls his eyes and tries to get Lucia to let go of Kowalski's t-shirt without waking her up. 

* 

The next day, somebody calls in a double homicide in Belmont; Danny and Claudia Sciretta, right in their own living room, matching holes in their heads. It's got Outfit involvement written all over it, and for a second, Ray thinks he's going to throw up, right there on Kowalski's messy stacks of half-finished paperwork. 

"Vecchio! Kowalski!" 

It's mostly Armando Langoustini that gets Ray into Welsh's office. He props himself up against the door frame, trying to look like he's just slouching there because Kowalski's bad habits are rubbing off on him, and not because his knees are starting to shake. 

"Officially, I'm giving this one to Huey and Dewey," Welsh says right up front. "Now, this whole station with the possible exception of Detective Dewey knows that this oughtta be your case. But it occurs to me that it might be unwise to have two guys known as Detective Vecchio taking the lead on a something like this." 

Kowalski is nodding, his boots scuffing restlessly against the carpet. "Too easy for some wiseguy to put together the puzzle." 

"Precisely. So I want you two to help out on this one, but keep a low profile and don't get anywhere near it together. If one of you is talking to the family, the other had better be checking out that jewellery heist over on the North side, you got it?" 

Kowalski opens his mouth like he's going to protest, but Welsh cuts him off. "Vecchio, you think you're good for this?" 

Welsh is a real stand-up guy, looks out for his detectives. If Ray said no way in hell was he ready to go solo on assignment like this, not eight weeks out from a year and a half undercover in hell and four of those weeks spent in rehab for being shot, Welsh would back him up. But Ray's got his clearance for active duty, and if he starts running from things now, he's not ever going to get his life back. 

"I'm good for it, sir," Ray says. 

"Glad to hear it," says Welsh. "Get to work, gentlemen, and be careful."

"You don't gotta do this," Kowalski says in an undertone, turning his back to the bullpen when Ray stops by their desk. "It'd make more sense for me to stay on the homicide full-time with Huey and Dewey while you wrap up the heist, yeah?" 

"Right, because you have so much experience with _cosa nostra_ ," Ray snaps. "You'd be a real asset. Did you not hear me say I was good for this?"

"Yeah, but I've also seen you have a panic attack at a little league game, so maybe you can understand why I am unconvinced," Kowalski says. 

"Shut up," Ray says, pushing past him. "Go do your job, Kowalski." 

Ray spends the rest of the day at the crime scene, interviewing first responders and trying to find somebody, anybody, who'd admit to seeing anything. But everybody was either visiting their sister out in Skokie or their kids had a fundraiser concert at school or they were out having a few drinks with the boys. Fraser, maybe, could've got somebody to give them at least a clue, but nobody wants anything to do with Ray, especially not when the only face he can show them is the Bookman's. That works pretty well in interrogation, but it's not the kind of thing that gets witnesses to come forward, not on a case like this. It's all he's got, though, because pulling on that calm, cold armour is the only thing keeping him together right now.

"It's getting late, man," Huey says, after Ray makes the little old lady who lives across the street from the crime scene start crying. "Go home, and we'll call you if anybody starts talking." 

Instead, Ray goes back to the station and starts looking at the paperwork for the case, flipping through files until his vision is blurry, trying to find something linking either of the Scirettas to the Chicago Mob. The night janitor comes through and is polite enough to ignore him. Ray's trying to make the scrawl of notes on this background report resolve themselves into coherent words and sentences when Kowalski storms into the bullpen. 

Ray's kind of stiff from sitting hunched over for--Jesus, it's nearly eleven o'clock--and Kowalski's got him cornered against the wall before he can do anything about it. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" Kowalski yells. "I've got Ma and the girls calling me in tears wanting to know why you haven't come home, why aren't you answering your cell phone, are you dead, and you're sitting here, what, doing the crossword?" 

"I'm _working_ ," Ray snarls, trying to shove him away. "Get outta my face, asshole." 

"Shut up before I punch you in the head," Kowalski says, clenching his fists. "Turn your cell phone on and call your Ma and tell her you'll be home in fifteen minutes." 

"Battery's dead," Ray says, shaking it. "Shit. Did they say if Lucia was okay?" 

"Maybe you should've thought about that before you went AWOL," Kowalski says meanly. "Look, just go home, okay?" 

"I'm going, I'm going," Ray says, glaring at him. 

As he's walking out of the bullpen, he hears Kowalski say, "Everything's fine. He's just, uh, really working hard on this case. Yeah, he's on his way right now." 

Ma's sitting up in the living room, holding Lucia in her lap, the television turned on real low. She looks up when Ray comes in, and holds a finger to her lips. Ray lingers awkwardly in the doorway, watching Lucia frown and squirm in her sleep. 

"Why didn't you answer your cell phone?" Ma's not yelling like she normally would, but somehow even whispering, she manages to make Ray's insides twist with guilt. 

"The battery died," Ray says. "I got caught up in the case, forgot to check. Did Lucy--was she okay?"

Ma gives him a look that says, _Would I be sitting here with her in the middle of the night if she was okay?_ and brushes a wisp of hair off of Lucia's forehead. "She worried when you didn't come home for her bedtime. We all worry for you, Raimondo." Ray winces. 

"I know," he says. "I'll make sure I keep in touch next time, okay?" 

Lucia grumbles when Ray picks her up, but she's asleep again by the time he gets her upstairs. He puts her down in her crib, then kicks off his shoes and collapses onto the bed. 

He can't sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees bodies, blood soaking into thick, soft carpet, spreading across red clay tiles, soaking into the desert sand. And he sees the front door of the house hanging open and blood drying sticky on Ma's polished parquet floors. 

Lucia makes a sad, questioning noise into the darkness, and Ray says, "I gotcha. I'm right here," stumbling out of bed to pick her up. It's 3:17 AM. Lucia snuggles up against his chest and goes back to sleep. Ray lies there in the dark, breathing in the soft baby-powder smell of her hair, and wonders how many more times she's going to forgive him for letting her down. 

*

The next day, Ray busts his ass trying to get fifteen hours of work done in twelve. None of the Scirettas' surviving family have anything to say about what they might've been involved in that could've gotten them put on an Outfit hitlist, but Ray knows in his gut that's what happened. There's a brother, single, and a sister, married with two kids, who all should've been put under protective custody as soon as the call came in, but the CPD doesn't have that kind of manpower, not for running on a hunch. Around eight pm, his cell phone rings.

"Go put the kid to bed and get some dinner," Kowalski says. "I don't want to deal with any more crying Vecchio women this week." 

"Quit telling me what to do," Ray mutters, rubbing his eyes. 

"Okay," Kowalski says. "Then quit acting like an idiot." 

So Ray goes home and picks up Lucia from where she's nodding off in Frannie's lap, carries her upstairs, and puts her to bed. Then Ma forces him to sit down at the table and eat the leftovers she'd kept warm for him. She keeps trying to add second helpings, like maybe she can catch him in this endless loop of trying to clean his plate so that he can't go back to work. 

"Ma, I gotta go," he says, because there are files stacked three deep on his desk and also he's going to explode if he eats another bite of lasagne. "I got my cell phone this time, okay, so if anything happens, you can call me. Don't wait up." 

"You might as well sleep at the police station," she complains, but she gives him a tight hug, and Ray can hear her starting the rosary under her breath as he leaves. 

The night janitor's already been through, and the station is empty and dark when Ray heads into the bullpen. His desk lamp is on, though, and Kowalski's there, chair tipped back with his boots up on the desk, squinting at a file. Ray is not exactly surprised. 

"Put your glasses on, Stanley," he says from the doorway, and Kowalski almost falls out of his chair. 

"Jesus Christ, Vecchio!" he yelps, slamming the chair down onto all four feet. "This ain't Vegas, you do not get to do the creepy Bookman thing with me." 

Ray's eyes narrow. "I'm not doing anything with you, Kowalski."

Kowalski ducks his head. "Yeah, that was outta line," he mutters. "Just, I figured you were, you know, at home with the kid."

"I was," Ray says. "And she's gonna wake me up at like six o'clock in the morning, so hand me the Durante file so I can get out of here before midnight." 

"You looking for a Mob connection there?" Kowalski asks, shuffling through the files on the chair next to him. "'Cause I've been checking out the old Marino case, and it looks like Danny Sciretta used to do some business with him. Could be how they got involved with this mess."

Ray's pretty sure there's something bigger than that going on, but it's a good place to start. Durante and Marino had both worked for a guy named Caputo, back when Ray was still in town, running a couple of his protection rackets. Maybe the Scirettas had wanted in on a slice of that pie. Ray drags over a chair and steals Kowalski's pen to start taking notes. 

Kowalski steals it back, flashing Ray that quick, bright smile. 

"Jesus, what are you, ten?" Ray mutters, staring down at his file and refusing to give in to the urge to smile back. Kowalski's his partner and they've got a job to do. Fraser was bad enough; Ray's got too much on his plate right now to deal with that kind of mess again. 

*

It's still dark outside when Ray jolts awake. For a second, he can't remember where he is or what woke him up, and he's expecting gunshots or explosions or maybe something simple and neat like a noose or a knife between the ribs. He's shaking and clammy with fear-sweat and he can't breathe. Then the phone goes off again and the baby starts crying, and he starts to remember where--and who--he is, but he's still choking on the terror swelling up in his throat. 

He grabs Lucia out of her crib and sinks down onto the floor with her, back pressed up against the wall, fumbling for the phone with his other hand. She's calming down some, burying her hot damp little face against his chest, and Ray squeezes her gently. The phone goes off for a third time, and he finally pulls himself together enough to answer it.

"Vecchio," he says, only it doesn't come out, and he has to clear his throat and try again. 

"Need you at the station," Welsh says. "Mike Sciretta was just found dead in a motel in Montclare." 

"Shit," Ray says. "Okay. I gotta get somebody up to watch the kid, and I'll be right there." 

He bangs on Ma's door til she opens it, clutching the neck of her dressing gown and looking terrified. Lucia's crying again. 

"I gotta go to the station," Ray says. "Don't worry, okay? I'll call you if I'm going to be late tonight." He hands Lucia over, kisses her forehead and his Ma's cheek, and runs back upstairs to get dressed. 

Kowalski's already at the 2-7 when Ray finally gets there, hunched over in the corner on the phone, talking real low. The Duck Boys are in interrogation one and two, presumably with the motel staff. Welsh's office door is open, and he waves Ray in, sliding a picture across the desk. He can do this, it's just like listening to a _capo_ making a report. The body in that picture doesn't mean anything to him, except that its former owner isn't going to be causing him any more problems. 

"The motel manager found him this morning when his time ran out and he wouldn't open the door," Welsh says. "No sign of a struggle, everything done execution style, just like the other two." 

"They definitely pissed off somebody important," Ray says, and he sounds way too cold, but that's better than the alternative. "Is this finally gonna be enough to get a protective detail on the sister?"

"Kowalski's on the phone with her now," Welsh says. "The media is going to get ahold of this one, and it's going to get ugly. The two of you keep your faces off of 6 o'clock news, you got it?"

"Yes, sir," Ray says, and goes to see what Kowalski's got from the sister. 

"She wouldn't talk with me," Kowalski says. "Put her husband on instead. He says they got no idea what the Scirettas were involved in."

"You believe him?" 

Kowalski shrugs. "Maybe. You wanna keep working the Durante and Marino angle, and I'll go see what I can find out at the motel and work on wringing some more out of him?" 

What Ray wants is to go eat breakfast with his family and then go back to bed, but that's not really an option, so he says, "Sure. I'll call you if I turn up anything useful." 

A couple of names keep coming up, guys that, when Ray digs a little deeper, all have a history of conflict with Caputo and his people. A couple of them are still in MCC, some out on parole, and Ray calls Kowalski with the list. It's not much, but Ray's got a feeling there's something here. 

"Any idea who they were working for?" Kowalski asks. 

"Not yet," Ray says. "Somebody new in town, maybe." 

"What's this got to do with the case?" 

"Maybe nothing," Ray says. "But I got a hunch."

"Okay," Kowalski says. "I'm not getting anything out of the Morellos, so I'll talk to a couple people and try to find something the Lieu will like better than a hunch."

Welsh sends Huey and Dewey down to the MCC to talk to the guys on Ray's list, and sends Ray home at six o'clock. 

"I appreciate your dedication to this case, Detective," he says. "But you look like hell. Go home and get some rest. I don't want you getting shot because you're too sleep-deprived to remember your own name." 

Given that it's harder than it should be for Ray to do that most days anyway, he doesn't argue. 

*

Ma's thrilled to have him home for dinner with the family for the first time all week. Ray tries to smile and act like he's feeling great, because Ma deserves to have an evening where everything goes right and he doesn't ruin it with his issues. Lucia's a little bit quieter than usual, but otherwise she seems like she's moved on from the rough start they had this morning. 

After dinner, Ray sits down with her in the living room, but her cousins are colouring on the living room rug, and she kicks her feet and squirms until he puts her down with them. She's more interested in crumpling up the paper and snapping the crayons than in trying to colour with them. Nicci's a good kid, but there's only so much she can be expected to put up with, so Ray goes and brings a bunch of Lucia's toys from the nursery and puts them down for her. 

Nicci grabs the caribou bone toy that Fraser sent, and tries to teach Lucia how to play with it, even though Lucia's not really old enough to do anything with it but stick it in her mouth. Fraser must've played the same game with the twins when Ray wasn't paying attention, because Nicci's even trying to tell some garbled version of the counting game that Ray remembers from Fraser's letter. 

Ray still hasn't written him back; both of the letters are upstairs in the drawer by his bed. He goes and grabs them both, giving Lucia's to Nicci so she can read the counting story. The other crumpled up one, he hangs onto. Frannie and Ma are still going through a whole roll of film every few days, taking pictures of Lucia, and Ray finds one of her playing with the toy wolf Kowalski'd given her. Maybe Fraser will get a kick out of that.

Ray tells him how the family's doing, about Frannie getting ready to take her comps and Maria's promotion at work and the _nipoti_ 's general well-being. He tells him a lot about Lucia, how she'd liked the toy he sent and was learning to crawl and had a new tooth coming in, how she'd hit it off with Kowalski. He even lies and tells Fraser he's finally started looking for a new Riv to replace the one that's currently rusting at the bottom of the lake.

It's a pretty good letter, Ray figures, nothing in there to make Fraser worry, and so he signs it and folds it up and puts it into the envelope with the photograph. And then he pulls it out again and scribbles a note at the bottom, beneath his signature. 

_One more thing, Benny. I'd like you to be her godfather, you know, if you want. She's already been baptised, so it's nothing official or anything, but it'd mean a lot to me._

There's not really anything else to say, so Ray puts everything back in the envelope and seals it up fast, before he can change his mind. 

It's getting close to Lucia's bedtime by now, and Ray can hear her starting to get fussy in the living room. He dumps her toys back in her toy box and carries her upstairs, sitting down with her against the pile of pillows on the bed, hoping to make up a little for the craziness of this week with some quiet time. She snuggles up in the curve of his arm and smiles sleepily around her thumb. Ray grins back, and a little bit of the tension that's been knotting up inside him all week eases.

He dozes for a little while, holding her, but when his cell phone goes off, he's awake enough to answer it before it makes Lucia do more than whimper unhappily. 

"Shhh, it's okay," Ray says, rocking her a little. "Go back to sleep." He waits til she settles down before he says, "Vecchio," into the phone.

"Emma Morello's skipped out on her protective detail," Kowalski says. He's breathing hard. "She took her kids with her."

"Goddamnit," Ray breathes, easing gently to his feet. "Any idea where she's gone?" 

"Nope," Kowalski says. "Welsh has an alert out on her, but he doesn't want to make too much noise about it in case the bad guys find her first. He's got Huey and Dewey trying to track her down, and a new protective detail on the husband--there was, uh, a breach there too."

"Gimme fifteen minutes," Ray says. 

Kowalski grunts an affirmative and hangs up. 

Ray kisses the top of Lucia's head. "I gotta go, Lucy," he whispers, even though she's asleep. "But I'll be here in the morning, okay?" 

Frannie's still awake when he goes downstairs to put Lucia in the nursery, and Ray explains what's happening. 

"I'll put the baby monitor in my room," Frannie promises, looking at him with big, scared eyes. "Are you gonna be at work all night?"

"I hope not," Ray says. "We won't be able to do much til in the morning, I'm just going in to talk to Kowalski." 

Frannie puts down her textbook and gives him a hard hug anyway. 

*

Kowalski's the only person in the station when Ray gets there, pacing around the bullpen. The knuckles of his right hand are wrapped in a bandage. 

"What happened?" Ray demands, shrugging out of his jacket. 

"Punched the wall," Kowalski mutters. 

Ray shakes his head in disgust. "Did you and the protective detail already make your reports?"

Kowalski nods, and hands over a file. 

The protective detail's reports are first, Owens and Anderson, a couple of beat cops that came in while Ray was in Vegas. Ray's never said a word to either of them, but half a page into Owens' report, he knows for a fact they're both fucking idiots. 

Owens had called Kowalski when Emma packed up the kids and floored it out of the driveway, and while he was on the phone, Anderson had let two men onto the property, with "repeated assurances from the subject under protection that they were trusted business associates offering their assistance during a time of personal duress." 

"Jesus Christ," Ray mutters, shuffling til he finds Kowalski's report. It picks up about where Ray'd stopped reading on Owens', written in messy, run-on sentences and Kowalski's usual creative spelling. Kowalski had responded immediately, radioed for some backup besides the morons on the protective detail--the exact words on the official report--and busted into the house

Ray's heartbeat starts pounding in his ears, and everything goes slow and cold. "You went running into the middle of a potential mob hit without backup or any idea what was going down." His voice is flat, the voice that meant things were going to go very badly for whatever sad bastard had fucked up big enough to catch the Bookman's attention.

Kowalski stiffens. "Yeah, because I was trying to keep the guy from getting _shot in the head._ " 

"You, single-handed, against a couple of Outfit hitmen?" Christ, suddenly that's all Ray can see, Kowalski getting his stupid brains blown out, and things aren't slow and cold any more. "What, are you trying to stand in for the Mountie or something? Because you're a piss-poor substitute, Kowalski." 

Bringing up Fraser was the stupidest thing he could've done, because his Bookman façade was already slipping, and Kowalski looks like Ray just hauled back and punched him in the face. 

"Maybe you forgot while you were sitting in Vegas porking call-girls and putting out hits on people who didn't lick your shoes right, but--" 

Before he can finish, Ray does punch him. Kowalski swings right back, pain blossoming bright and hot along Ray's jaw. Kowalski fights dirty, but Ray's got ten pounds on him and the advantage of not having already busted himself up picking fights with the drywall. He gets Kowalski's arm twisted up above his head and shoves him bodily up against the wall. Kowalski's breathing hard; Ray can feel it hot and damp against his face. 

"You're an _idiot,_ " Ray pants, and then he's kissing Kowalski, this bruising, angry kiss that makes their teeth click together. "God, you absolute fucking idiot." Kowalski groans and kind of arches into him, catches Ray's lip between his teeth.

Ray tastes blood, and oh Christ, that's Kowalski's dick hard against Ray's hip. He's stopped struggling to get free and is just grinding himself against Ray, muttering, "Fuck, Vecchio, you--"

"Shut up," Ray says, forcing his thigh up between Kowalski's. "Shut the fuck up." 

"Make me," Kowalski grits, and somehow he doesn't sound like a stupid ten-year-old. He just sounds furious and turned on, and goddamnit, this is all so fucked up. Ray shoves his thigh harder against Kowalski's dick, until Kowalski grunts and pushes up onto his toes, trying to regain a little leverage. 

"What, you can't take it?" Ray says, only it comes out kind of breathless, and Kowalski gives him a sharp, mean smile. Ray's grip on his wrist has gone slack.

"I can take anything you wanna give me," Kowalski snarls, so Ray grabs him by the jacket and hauls him towards the supply closet. 

This is all wrong--instead of wool and tea and leather, Kowalski smells like coffee and hair gel and engine grease. There's a huge, gaping space where Fraser oughtta be, his elbow crammed up into Ray's side, his breathing steady and even against Ray's cheek. That space is way too big for Kowalski and his lean angles to fill, even with all his fidgeting, his hands roaming along Ray's arms and shoulders. His breathing is ragged and noisy. For a second, Ray's chest hurts so bad he thinks he's going to throw up. 

Then Kowalski's scraping his teeth along Ray's jaw, his hand sliding under the waistband of Ray's slacks, and oh Christ, no one's touched him like this since Vegas. Ray surges into it, so that Kowalski's back thumps against the shelves of printer paper, making them wobble dangerously. In Vegas, everybody had soft, manicured hands, pretty and perfect. Kowalski's fingers are bony and calloused, clumsy as he jerks Ray off left-handed. 

Fraser wouldn't be clumsy, Ray thinks. And Fraser would never have jerked him off in the supply closet; it wouldn't have been _proper_. If Fraser were going to do this--and there'd been a time when Ray thought they might be heading that way, only he'd left before anything could come of it--anyway, Fraser would've take Ray home to his crappy apartment and laid him out on that narrow, uncomfortable cot, and he probably would've called whatever he did to Ray there making love. It wouldn't have been ugly like this. 

Ray wonders if Kowalski's thinking about Fraser, wonders what his _might-have-beens_ look like. He flinches away from that thought and flails for the light switch. 

Kowalski blinks and says, "What the fuck, Vecchio." 

"Shut _up,_ " Ray says, and he gets Kowalski's jeans open, gets a hand on him. Too rough, probably, but this isn't about being nice, and Kowalski's head thuds against the stacks of printer paper. Ray drags his teeth over the place in Kowalski's neck where he can see the pulse pounding, and Kowalski groans, his hand speeding up on Ray's cock.

When Ray finally comes, his fingers are digging into Kowalski's shoulder hard enough to leave bruises. Kowalski doesn't seem to care, just wraps his hand slick with Ray's come around Ray's fingers and jerks himself off. It doesn't even occur to Ray to try to let go. 

Afterwards, Kowalski flips the light back off and they just stand there, breathing each other's breath in the dark. 

"You ever do something that stupid again, I'll kill you myself," Ray says finally, in this wobbly, wrecked voice. 

Kowalski snorts, and doesn't try to follow Ray when he walks out.

*

The next morning, Frannie wakes Ray up knocking on his door a little before six. She's holding Lucia, who's wide-awake and cheerful. 

"Thanks, Frannie," Ray mumbles. He tries to take Lucia back to bed with him and catch a few more minutes of sleep, but she just babbles noisily to herself and keeps reaching up to pat his face, like she wants to know why he isn't awake and getting ready to play with her or give her breakfast.

"Okay, okay," Ray groans, sitting up. Lucia rewards him with a happy shriek that makes him want to lie back down and cover his head with a pillow. 

Ma's just starting breakfast when Ray stumbles in and puts Lucia down in her high chair. 

"You went back to the police station last night?" Ma says without looking up from the eggs she's whisking. 

"I had to, Ma," Ray says. "Kowalski--" He breaks off, because somehow he'd managed to not think about what had gone down last night, and now it's replaying itself over and over, the sound of Kowalski's harsh breathing and the way his cock had felt in Ray's hand. Ray starts digging through the cabinet for Lucia's fortified cereal, trying to think about anything but that. 

"Is he okay?" Ma demands, and Ray winces.

"Aside from trying to get his brains blown out by the Mob?" Ray says. "Yeah, sure, everything's fine." 

Ma crosses herself, looking horrified. "Raimondo--"

"Sorry," Ray says. He starts making Lucia's cereal, like maybe that'll hide how he can't meet his mother's eyes. "I'm sorry, Ma. Look, I can't talk about work, okay? It's not good, right now."

"You boys have to take care of each other," Ma says. 

_Right._ Ray makes a choked noise, trying to hold back a bark of hysterical laughter. 

He heads into the 2-7 as soon as Lucia's done with her breakfast. It's still pretty early, and only a handful of people are there yet, including Welsh. No sign of Kowalski, thank God. 

Lieutenant Welsh isn't excited about Ray canvassing the local businesses without backup but with the Duck Boys still trying to track down Emma Morello and the ban on him and Kowalski working the case together, he doesn't have much choice. There are too many angles to this case, and not enough manpower to cover them all.

"Don't do anything stupid, Detective," Welsh says.

"Of course not, sir." Ray gives him what he hopes is a sane and reassuring smile. 

He almost slams into Kowalski on his way out of the bullpen. Kowalski jerks out of the way, and gives him this wide-eyed look. There's an ugly blue and purple bruise ringing his left eye.

"Sorry," Ray mutters and pushes on past him. Things are fucked up enough already; the last thing he needs is to get into it with Kowalski here in the middle of the station. 

*

Ray's taking a break from canvassing to grab something to eat when his cell phone goes off. 

"Vecchio!" It's Huey. "Morello blew his protective detail. We're in pursuit, at--" a crackle of static "68th and Champlain, heading east. We're probably going to need backup." 

"Got it," Ray says, doing an illegal u-turn in the middle of the next intersection. 

"Right on Euclid," Huey says, and Ray can hear Dewey cursing in the background. "The protective detail think he's got a meet arranged with the same guys from yesterday. Maybe he's trying to cut a deal or get protection or something." 

This guy is too stupid to live, a fact that Ray is going to impress upon him very thoroughly when they've taken him into custody. He's getting closer to Huey and Dewey's location, only a few blocks away, coming up fast on the lake. The police radio crackles, Kowalski's voice yelling through the static for backup at a waterfront address, shots fired. 

"Request immediate assistance," Kowalski yells again, and Ray drops the cell phone and leans on the horn, the Ford's tires shrieking as he spins around the next corner. 

"This is 1-1-7 responding for backup," Ray says into the radio. "ETA within five minutes." There's no confirmation from Kowalski. Ray doesn't have time to think about what could be happening, about all the things that could be going wrong; he's just got to get there before it's too late.

The address Kowalski'd put out is right up on the waterfront, in the middle of a bunch of warehouses. The Ford skids to a stop beside the GTO, and Ray lurches out, leaving the door hanging open. He sees Huey and Dewey bolting around the corner of one of the warehouses and takes off after them. In the alley behind him, two more patrol cars and an ambulance are pulling onto the scene, sirens blaring. 

The doors of the L&R warehouse are askew, and Ray comes up at an angle, gun-first. 

"Stand down," Kowalski says, and Ray sags with relief. "All clear in here. There's another guy, armed, Huey and Dewey took off after him. You should--" 

But Ray doesn't hear the rest of whatever he says. Kowalski's kneeling beside a crumpled body, and there's a slick pool of blood spreading slowly towards him, threatening to soak into the knees of his jeans. It's Morello, his eyes wide open and glassy beneath the bullet hole in his forehead. Ray's seen too many bodies laid out like this, people who were jumped up enough to think they could challenge the Bookman's authority, people who were too stupid to do their job right, people who got in the wrong place at the wrong time. Armando didn't exactly have a rep for being patient and forgiving.

Morello's just another name on that list of people who are dead because of Ray, because he thought he could be a hero, because he thought he could do the right thing. His vision is going kind of grey around the edges and his stomach heaves weakly. He's still getting people killed, but he doesn't have Armando to fall back on any more. 

Kowalski's yelling again, and somebody pushes Ray roughly aside, where he sags against the wall and tries to close his eyes against the sight of all the blood, except there are plenty of other bodies waiting behind his eyelids, the same ones that wake him up sweating in the middle of the night. 

"Ray!" Kowalski's shaking him, his face a couple of inches away from Ray's. How did he get over here so fast? Ray didn't even notice. "Hey, you with me?" There's a streak of blood across his forehead, and he's getting blood on Ray's jacket where his fists are curled up in it. 

"Get away from me," Ray says, tries to say, but it doesn't come out as anything but a breathless creak. He can't stand the way Kowalski's looking at him, seeing everything as Ray falls apart right in front of him, in the middle of a crime scene. 

Kowalski flinches back. "You need to not be here," he says, letting go of Ray's jacket and turning away to talk to the paramedics bending over Morello's corpse. 

Ray's still shaking, and everything except the sight of blood is muted and far-off. He pulls himself together enough to get out of the warehouse, where Huey's reeling off the Miranda rights and shoving a hand-cuffed guy into the back of the black-and-white. Ray needs to go back to the station, help them with booking and statements and getting whatever they can out of the guy before he lawyers up. 

It takes him three tries to get the Ford started. He winds up parked in an alley five blocks away because he can't stay in his lane or navigate the intersections, and each time somebody's horn blares, his heart tries to pound its way out of his ribcage. But he can't stay there for long because he's blocking somebody's loading dock, and anyway, he's got a job to do. 

Kowalski's still at the hospital processing the perp he'd wounded when Ray finally gets to the station, and Huey and Dewey have already got their guy booked and in interrogation. The new civilian aide keeps giving Ray these big-eyed, nervous looks, trying to keep her distance as she pulls files, and he's suddenly aware of the blood that's drying stiff on the front of his jacket. 

"Vecchio." Welsh is standing in the doorway of his office. "Get in here." 

Ray shrugs out of his jacket and tries to ball it up in the little space between the desk and filing cabinet. 

"I want your statement on my desk in an hour," Welsh says. "And Vecchio, if your head isn't in the game, I want you to tell me now, you got it? This is a long way from over." 

"Sir." Ray clenches his fists to hide how they're shaking and tries to keep his face impassive. He's stuck this out so far, he's going to see it through. He doesn't have a choice.

"Okay," Welsh says. "Get to work, Detective." 

*

The station is starting to empty out when Kowalski shows up. Huey and Dewey haven't gotten anything useful out of their guy, and normally this is when Ray and Kowalski would take over. But Ray's got nothing left to give, no Bookman act left in him, and right now, Kowalski's not thinking about the case. 

"You need to hear this," he says over his shoulder to Ray, striding towards Welsh's office. 

"Media circus showed up at the hospital," Kowalski says, kicking the door closed. Welsh grimaces. "I got out of there as fast as I could, but Stella called me just now, says they run a clip on WGN with me ID'd as Detective Ray Vecchio." 

Welsh is already reaching for his phone. "I'll make sure it's not rerun," he says. "The two of you continue with this investigation, but keep your heads down, you got it? Anything else like this that comes up, you let me know right away." Whoever he's calling must pick up because he barks, "This is Lieutenant Harding Welsh at the 27th precinct. Put me through to O'Malley. Tell him it's urgent." 

There's still a little bit of blood on Kowalski's forehead, rust-coloured and flaking, and more in the creases of his knuckles and underneath his fingernails. Ray's maybe going to be sick. He ducks out of the Lieu's office without waiting to be dismissed. The men's room is deserted, and Ray splashes some water on his face and tries not to look at his reflection in the dirty mirror. By the time he gets back out to the bullpen, Kowalski's nowhere to be seen. Ray sits down with the stack of paperwork and tries to make himself useful. 

Huey and Dewey come out of interrogation looking disgusted and with nothing but a name for the new civilian aid to plug into the computer. Vinnie Salerno's spent time in Joliet for extortion and a couple of assault charges; Tommy Crespo over in the hospital with Kowalski's bullet in his leg is just more of the same. 

"We'll hit the streets tomorrow and see if we can't figure out who they were working for," Huey says. Kowalski comes out of interrogation and starts shuffling through the files on top of the civilian aide's cabinet.

Dewey snorts. "Waste of time," he says. "The hired muscle will get put away, and their bosses are just gonna hire more."

Which is nothing but the truth, and Ray's too wrung out to rise to the bait, if that's what it was. Maybe Dewey's just an idiot. 

"Get outta here," Kowalski says, shoving Dewey with his shoulder on his way to Ray's filing cabinet. Ray tries to ignore him, but Huey and Dewey clear out, and Kowalski's still standing there, fiddling with the straps of his shoulder holster. 

"You got something to say, spit it out already," Ray snaps, not meeting his eyes. 

"I just--you--" Kowalski makes a frustrated noise, shoving his fingers through his hair. Ray tries not to think about dried blood flaking off into the messy blond spikes. "Nothing. Gimme the Durante file, I wanna take a look at it next to Salerno's rap sheet."

Ray drags it out of the pile and shoves it across the desk to him. Kowalski opens his mouth like he's got something else he wants to say, then turns on his heel and walks out.

*

Ma and the girls are all waiting up when Ray gets home. Lucia's asleep on the couch next to Frannie, clutching her toy wolf and making little restless snuffling noises. The television is on, turned to one of the late night news channels, showing the outside of the L&R warehouse from earlier that day.

Ma jumps up and throws her arms around Ray. "We've been watching the news all afternoon. There was so much blood, and they're saying it was the Mafia, they killed four people! This is what you and Ray were working on?" 

"Yeah," Ray says tonelessly.

"Oh, _figlio mio_ ," Ma says, and lets go of him to cross herself. "But you're doing good work, making this city better." 

"Tell that to the guy who got his brains blown out this afternoon," Ray says with a shudder, and Ma takes a step back from him. 

The girls are both asking questions, talking over each other, and then Tony comes in from the garage, adding to the noise. They want to know what happened, they want to be reassured that they're safe, that justice has been served, they want him to tell them how he was a hero and brought the bad guys down. The tv flashes up a picture of the inside of the warehouse, with the pool of Morello's blood still there in the centre of it, and Ray's knees start shaking. 

"I'm going to bed," he tries to say, but his voice isn't working right. All the noise has woken Lucia up, and she starts fussing. Maria puts a hand on his arm, and Ray jerks away.

"Don't touch me," he says. It comes out way too loud and sharp, and Maria pulls back like she's been burned, looking at him like she's afraid he's going to slap her. 

Tony's glaring at him, and Maria's yelling, and Lucia's picked up on all the tension, fussing turning into a full-on wail. Ray's got to get out of here, or he's going to have a total screaming meltdown in the middle of his living room, in front of his entire family. For a second, he thinks about leaving Lucia here with them, maybe she'd be better off, but she wouldn't understand that it was only temporary, she'd probably think she was being abandoned for good. Ray can't do that to her. 

He picks her up, moving on autopilot as he gathers up her things and takes her out to the car. Ma's wringing her hands and crying, and Frannie keeps trying to get him to stop and talk to her, but it all seems kind of far away and distant. Lucia's crying dies down to soft little hiccoughs as Ray pulls out of the neighbourhood. 

They spend the night in a pretty nice hotel downtown, with security cameras and a twenty-four hour doorman. Lucia's asleep again by the time they get upstairs, and Ray lets her stay in her carseat while he showers and tries to pull himself together, turning the water up as hot as he can stand, trying to scald the traces of this day off of his skin. 

He's starving, but calling room service would mean having to talk to someone, and then opening the door to a stranger, with his daughter asleep on the other side of the room. Just thinking about it is enough to make his heart start beating too fast again.

Ray takes Lucia out of her carseat and lies down with her. She's dreaming, kicking her little feet and frowning, and Ray feels like somebody's reaching right inside his chest and wrapping their fingers around something important, his heart or his lungs or something. 

"It's okay," he tells her, kissing her forehead. "It's all gonna be fine." He wishes he could make himself believe it. 

*

Ray doesn't get much sleep that night, and what he does get isn't exactly restful. He keeps starting awake, soaked in sweat, expecting to smell gunpowder and blood and the hot, dry desert air. It's a relief when Lucia wakes up around five-thirty, wanting a new diaper and attention and breakfast. But that also means that he's got to think about what the hell he's going to do now--he can't hide here in the hotel with her forever. 

"Guess I don't have much choice, huh?" he asks her. Lucia just blinks at him solemnly over the edge of her bottle. "Yeah, okay. You finish that, and we'll head back home." He's got to go to the station, and there's nobody but Ma or one of the girls to look after Lucia while he's working.

The house is still quiet when he walks in, none of the chaos of a weekday morning. Maria's awake though, reading a magazine and drinking coffee at the kitchen table, probably enjoying the only time to herself she's going to get all day. Which doesn't make Ray feel any better about this whole mess. 

"Hey," Ray says softly. "I'm sorry about yesterday." 

Maria closes her magazine and looks at him. "Yeah," she says. "I know." 

That's Ray's cue to promise that it won't happen again, that he's fixing things. But they'd heard those same promises from Pop a thousand times, til they stopped meaning anything at all, and Ray's not going to make any promises of his own until he knows for sure he can keep them. So he doesn't say anything, doesn't try to make any excuses. 

Maria finishes her coffee and gets up to pour another cup. 

"You want one?" she asks, reaching up to open the cabinet. 

Ray nods. 

They stand there together by the counter drinking their coffee in silence while Lucia coos to herself and plays with Ray's tie. 

After a while, Maria says, "Do you have to go in to work?" 

"Yeah," Ray says. 

Maria puts her mug in the sink and holds her arms out for Lucia. 

"Okay," she says. "Come here, _gattina_. I'll keep an eye on her til Ma gets up." 

"Thanks," Ray says, untangling Lucia's fingers from his tie and passing her over. "I--thanks." 

"Take care of yourself," Maria says. Ray nods and gives her an awkward, one-armed hug.

*

Pulling into the station parking lot, the bagel and orange juice Ray'd grabbed from the corner store start churning unpleasantly in his stomach, and his hands get kind of shaky. He tries to take a couple of deep breaths, find some kind of equilibrium. Christ, he wishes Fraser were here. It'd be okay for Fraser to see him like this because Fraser wouldn't judge him for falling apart, and he'd probably have already solved this case, too. If Fraser were here, Morello'd probably still be alive.

But Fraser's not here, so Ray's going to have to figure out how to get by on his own. He did it before Fraser showed up, and he did it for more than a year out in the desert, and he can do it now. 

Kowalski's already at the station, slamming his palm against the side of the bullpen's fax machine and growling curses. 

"Get over here and make this thing spit out the bank records," he says, when he catches sight of Ray, and then, more softly, "Jesus, Vecchio, you look like hell." 

Ray barks a laugh, because Kowalski's hair is standing up in uneven clumps and the shadows under his eyes are so bad it looks like he's got two black eyes, instead of just the one Ray gave him. Thinking about that makes him think about what had happened right afterwards, and he can't meet Kowalski's eye. 

"Check the phone jack," he mutters. Kowalski glares at him. It takes fifteen minutes of fiddling with the phone jack and randomly pushing buttons and shaking ink cartridges trying to remember what Frannie did to make the machine work before page after page of figures from the Chicago Bank and Trust started spilling out into the tray. 

"What's this for?" Ray asked, flipping through them. 

"Got a warrant for the Calzeghe brother's financial information," Kowalski says. "That name mean anything to you? Francis and Ricardo Calzeghe?" 

Ray shakes his head. 

"Well, me and Huey figure they're the new guys in town, the ones employing the guys on that list you came up with," Kowalski says. "Their name came up a couple times, and it fits--the new protection rackets on the South side and that money laundering scam we couldn't ever nail down. Up-and-comers, butting heads with the old-time establishments, maybe. Anyway, some of your guys all worked for Porter & Co. Loading, which I'm pretty sure is a front." He rattles the fax pages. 

"What makes you think they'd have a reason to take out the Scirettas?" Ray asks. "That's a pretty big escalation." 

Kowalski rubs the back of his neck. "Still working on that." 

Ray sighs, and takes his half of the statements.

Mid-morning, Huey and Dewey call to let Kowalski know that they're back on the streets, talking to neighbours and business owners paying their protection money, trying to scrape up something that'll point to somebody with a motive and a means to wipe out an entire family. 

Ray's eyes are starting to cross from double checking all of the financial columns when Kowalski's cell rings again. There are plenty of gaps, more than enough to account for the unsolved money-laundering gig. He doesn't have anything solid yet, but his gut is pretty much sold on there being a Mob connection here.

"Where's this at?" Kowalski says, dragging a map across the desk. Ray puts down his pen and listens. "Yeah, that's Caputo's territory. But they said--shit, _shit_ , okay, let me talk to Vecchio." 

"So, the Duck Boys just talked to a guy who said Danny Sciretta was one of the guys who helped run the, uh, voluntary neighbourhood association." Ray grimaces. 

"Only then some policies started changing, some fees went up--which he was not happy about, apparently--and there were some new guys hanging around, but Danny Sciretta was still there, and now he had a couple of guys under him." 

Ray's brain feels like it's stuffed with cotton; no way it should have have taken this long for all the pieces to come together, to figure out what the hell was going on. He _knows_ the way these guys work, the things that matter to them. 

"It wasn't the Calzeghe brothers who put out the hit," he says slowly. "It was somebody working for Caputo, taking out traitors. Sciretta went over there hoping for a bigger slice of the pie, and he took the rest of them with him."

Kowalski looks doubtful. "So Caputo has them iced? It's not like they were major assets or anything--hell, it doesn't look like they were much more than hired muscle and numbers guys themselves. And I don't think Morello really had any idea what his brother-in-law was getting him into." 

"Doesn't matter," Ray says. "I--" He swallows. Armando'd had people put away for less. "Look, these new guys are horning in on Caputo's territory, lifting his people out from under him, promising them bigger and better things. He knows he's got to nip that in the bud. He's gotta prove he's still the biggest and baddest, the one in charge. Trust me, that's plenty of motive."

Kowalski makes a noise like a growl. "So Dewey was right."

"Yeah," Ray says. "Caputo's gonna have an airtight alibi, and the paper trail on whoever hired the goons is gonna end up far away from him." They're going to have to do it all anyway, run the investigation into the ground, because that's their job, but it's nothing but a waste of man-hours and departmental funds. You didn't get to be a Mob boss and stay there for twenty years by being sloppy. Fraser wouldn't accept that, Ray thinks. Fraser wouldn't have have stopped until he found a way to make this right, and Ray's chest goes tight and aching, remembering Fraser's bloody, bruised-up face. Remembering Irene. He can't do this.

"Goddamnit!" Kowalski slams both fists down on the table, and Ray flinches, adrenaline stinging his veins and making his head spin. Kowalski doesn't notice, shoving his chair back from the desk and stomping across the bullpen.

"What about Emma Morello and her kids?" he says, spinning back around to face Ray. "You figure he's gonna keep gunning for her?" 

Ray's going to throw up. 

"Maybe," he whispers. God, he can't handle this. 

"I'm gonna call Welsh, let him know what we've got," Kowalski says. "He'll be able to put out the info--if she's in another city, maybe they can put her and the kids in a safe-house, something like that." 

What they've got isn't going to be enough for an arrest warrant, let alone a conviction, but Welsh will stand by them. Maybe it'll be enough to keep Emma Morello and her kids safe, if she can trust the cops far enough. But Ray figures she's got connections of her own, and it looks like she's more inclined to put her faith in them than in anything the legal system can give her. Looking at the cluster-fuck in front of them, Ray can't exactly blame her. 

"Lieu says he's coming in," Kowalski says. 

"Good," Ray says. "I got something to tell him." 

*

Welsh turns up half an hour later, looking grim. 

"I don't suppose there's any chance of you gentlemen having anything more tangible than a gut feeling to explain this case to my superiors?" 

"No, sir," Kowalski says. "But we're working on it." 

Welsh rubs a hand over his face. He knows as well as Ray does how unlikely they are to get anything that'll fly in court. 

"I'll see if the 2-1 can't spare us Besbriss and Malone to help out," he says. "I don't want to see either of you back in here until Monday, you got it? Get Huey and Dewey up to date and sort out your paperwork, then get out of here before I start hearing about it from the union." 

Kowalski nods and turns to go, kind of hesitating at the door when he realises Ray's not with him. 

"What, are we joined at the hip or something?" Ray says, and Kowalski stiffens and closes the door a little too hard behind him. 

"Detective?" There's a pretty clear note of warning in Welsh's voice. 

"I'm handing in my shield, sir." It's easier to say than Ray thought it would be, like it's happening to somebody else. 

"Excuse me?" 

"My shield, sir," Ray says, putting it down on the desk with his gun. "I'm handing it over."

"Look, Vecchio, if this is about the case, I'll take you off it. I understand that these things can take time."

"The Mob's not going anywhere, Lieutenant. After Vegas, I can't--I've gotten enough people killed already, okay?" 

"I hear you, Vecchio, but I'm refusing to accept your resignation." Welsh picks up his shield, turning it over in his hands. "You've got plenty of vacation time socked away, and some unpaid leave on top of that. I'll put that paperwork through for you, and hang onto this until you tell me you're ready to take it back. Got that?" 

"Sir--"

"Dismissed, Detective."

Ray's half-afraid Kowalski's going to be waiting on him when he gets back out to the bullpen, but it's deserted. The GTO's not in the parking lot either. Just as well, because Ray didn't have the first clue what to say to him.

*

Ray doesn't want to go home, but he doesn't really have anywhere else, now that he hasn't got any right to be at the station. The thought of calling Kowalski, of trying to pretend like they're partners still, like things hadn't already gone to hell before Ray'd run out on that, it makes Ray's stomach hurt. Besides, Lucia is at home, and Ray hasn't spent more than an hour with her all week, at least not while they were both awake. If he can't do his job as a cop, maybe he can at least do right by her, starting now. If he hurries, he'll get home in time to eat lunch with her. 

But that also means eating lunch with the rest of the family. Ma keeps giving him these tragic, long-suffering looks, and asking if he's okay, why won't he talk to his mother, and Frannie keeps talking about the case, about what Elaine's told her is going on and what people at the Academy are saying, asking Ray if any of it's true. Maria and Tony are fighting about something, and the kids keep trying to interrupt, getting shriller and shriller. Ray's starting to get a headache, throbbing behind his eyes. He tries to ignore it and tune everybody out, focus on keeping Lucia from getting pureed carrots everywhere. Lucia, at least, is easy. She grinned when he came into the room, and giggled when he picked her up to give her a kiss, because she doesn't know any better. 

"Everything is fine, and I don't wanna talk about it," Ray's saying for the tenth time, when his cell phone starts ringing in his jacket pocket hanging by the door. He ignores it. But it starts ringing again almost immediately, and Ray groans. It's Kowalski, no one else it could be. Everybody's staring at him now, even the kids, and Ray stomps across the room and turns the damn thing off. He's not carrying a badge anymore, which means that there's no reason for anybody to be trying to get in touch with him at home.

The house phone starts ringing next, and Ray shoves his chair back from the table and yanks it off its hook, disconnects the call, and leaves it dangling off the edge of the hall table, buzzing faintly.

Ma says, "Raimondo, what if it's something important?" 

"Then it's somebody else's problem," Ray says, picking Lucia up even though she hasn't had her bottle yet. He's got to get out of here; they can finish up lunch in the car or something. Frannie and Ma are giving him matching anxious looks, but he ignores them, taking Lucia upstairs to the nursery to clean her up.

"You wanna go to the park?" Ray asks Lucia while he puts her into a clean outfit. She looks at him doubtfully, and Ray tries to get himself under control. "We can have a picnic or something, okay?" Somebody's put the phone back on the hook; it's ringing again. He waits for it to stop before he takes Lucia back downstairs.

Frannie's on the phone in the entry hall, and she gives Ray a worried look over her shoulder when she sees him come down the stairs. 

"Yeah," she says into the phone. "Yeah, you can do that. I'll--yeah, that's good. Thanks." She hangs up and gives him a guilty look. "Ray's coming over," she says. 

Christ. The headache throbbing behind Ray's eyes kicks up a couple of notches. 

"I'm not gonna be here," he says, stepping around her to grab his coat and Lucia's diaper bag. 

Frannie grabs him by the sleeve. "Ray, wait," she says. "Look, I get that you don't want to talk to us about--" she waves her free hand wildly "--all of this, but you're _scaring_ me, okay?" 

"I'm sorry," Ray says helplessly, shaking off her hand. "Frannie, I'm sorry." She doesn't try to follow him out to the car.

*

It's a good day for going to the park, the kind of day that looks like a kid's painting, bright blue sky piled with fluffy white clouds and the grass so green and lush it almost doesn't look real. There are a bunch of kids playing with kites and a couple of games of pick-up soccer running on the other side of the field. It's too wide open and crowded, just like the little league field, but the alternative is going back home to face Ma and Frannie and Kowalski, and Ray can't do that.

He takes a couple of deep breaths and gets Lucia out of the car. They make for a little secluded spot next to one of the flower beds, where Ray spreads out a blanket and gives Lucia her bottle. She watches the kites soaring overhead with interest. Ray keeps an eye on the people on the grass around them and listens to the cacophony of yelling kids and barking dogs, trying to remember how this all would have felt before Vegas. 

When she's finished with her bottle, Lucia wiggles off of Ray's lap, trying to make a break for the flower-bed. She's still scooting along on her belly, but she's getting faster. Ray scoops her up and carries her over to check things out. She gets bored with the flowers when Ray won't let her pick them, and they wander over to the pond to watch people feeding the ducks. 

It's hard to stay wound-up on a day like this, with Lucia happy and giggling, and Ray only jumps a little when a lady walking her big golden retriever stops to ask how old Lucia is. Lucia shrieks with excitement and tries to dive out of his arms to pet the dog. 

"He's very friendly," the woman says, so Ray crouches down and lets Lucia stroke the dog's floppy ears while it pants happily into her face and makes her wrinkle her nose. The woman coos over her for a while, until Ray gets too uncomfortable and mumbles a lame excuse for moving on. People keep smiling at Lucia, but thankfully nobody else tries to talk to them.

Ray's just starting to think that maybe they can head back home when he catches sight of a familiar profile next to the water. He tries to shake it off--there are thousands of Italian guys in this city and lately all of them look like wiseguys to Ray--and keep on walking, but then the guy looks up and catches Ray staring at him. 

It's like every nightmare Ray's had since he came back. Every nerve in Ray's body is sparking with the urge to _run, now, go_ but for a second, he's totally frozen, unable to do anything but stare in blank horror. 

The guy's a dead-ringer for Pete Iorio, with the same heavy eyebrows that almost meet over the nose, the same wide, grinning mouth that makes him look kind of like a frog. Pete oversaw the Iguana family's operations on the south side of Las Vegas and let the Bookman know if anybody was causing problems, and then arranged to have those problems solved, usually in ways that Ray tried hard not to think about. And now he's fifty feet away, smiling that wide, froggy grin at Ray, and waving at Lucia, who flaps her hand tentatively in response. Then he turns away and scatters another handful of breadcrumbs for the ducks, and Ray can move again. 

He doesn't run, because of Lucia, but he goes straight back to the car and peels away from the park as fast as the traffic will allow. Lucia's whimpering in her carseat. Ray heads towards the Loop and tries to think. If it'd been just some lowly goombah, he'd probably have blown it off, figured it was his paranoia playing tricks on him. But with somebody like Pete, he can't take that kind of chance. Especially not after they aired that newsclip of Kowalski with his name on it. 

He doesn't think he's being tailed, but he drives around randomly for the better part of an hour, keeping a close eye on his rearview mirror to be sure. If he had his phone, he could call Welsh, or one of the emergency contact numbers the FBI gave him in Vegas. But it's still sitting on the table in the foyer, and Ray's not going to risk getting out of the car with Lucia to find a working payphone on the street.

In the backseat, Lucia starts crying, and Ray's going to have to make a decision. He can't go back to the house. 

"It's okay," he tells Lucia, reaching back to stroke her hair. "We're getting out of the car in a few minutes."

There's a safe-house near downtown, one of the places they would've taken Emma Morello and her kids, if she'd wanted the CPD's help. Ray's got access, and it'll have a phone. 

Ray's hands are slick with fear sweat, and it takes him almost a full minute to get into the building. The whole time, it feels like his heart is about to pound its way out of his ribcage. He keeps Lucia in her carseat and does a quick check of the premises, his back-up gun primed in his free hand. Everything is secure. 

Ray leans against the wall, sliding down it to sit beside Lucia's carseat. She's crying again, but Ray can't do anything but sit there and _shake_ , his teeth chattering so hard that his jaw hurts. He tries to get a hold of himself, sucking in huge, ragged breaths until his heart stops pounding and he can fumble the belt of Lucia's carseat open and lift her out. She buries her face against his shoulder, still crying thinly. 

"It's gonna be okay," Ray says, rubbing her back. "I just gotta make a couple of phone calls."

He sits down by the phone with her in his lap, clutching her stuffed wolf. The first three of the FBI numbers he tries are disconnected, the fourth goes to somebody that he's never heard of, and by the time he gets to the automated message on the fifth and final one, his heart is trying to pound its way out of his chest again. Okay, so the FBI's not going to be any use, now that he's not their man on the ground anymore. Ray tells himself that they were never much use anyway, and that this is only a minor setback.

He misdials the station number the first time because his hands are still shaking, but he gets it right on the second try, clutching the phone so tightly while it rings that the plastic creaks.

"Put me through to the Lieu," Ray says to the desk sergeant. "It's an emergency." 

"Lieutenant Welsh isn't at the precinct currently," the desk sergeant says. "If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911." 

Ray hangs up and calls Kowalski, who answers on the second ring.

"Who is this?" His voice is sharp with suspicion.

"Me," Ray says. "Listen, Kowalski, do you know where Ma and the girls are? And the kids?" 

"At home, as far as I know," Kowalski says, and Ray breathes a sigh of relief. Kowalski would know if anything had happened to them. "Where the hell are you?"

"Tell them to stay at the house, okay?" Ray says, and Kowalski makes a spluttering noise. 

"Vecchio, what the fuck is going on?" 

"You got a pen?" Ray asks. "I got something I need you to get Welsh to run by the Las Vegas PD. Pete Iorio, _caporegime_ for the Bookman." 

"Why?" Kowalski says.

"Because I think maybe I bumped into him earlier at Eckhart Park," Ray says.

"Fuck," Kowalski says. "Look, I'm going to your place right now, okay? Where are you? Do you have the kid?" 

"Yeah, I got her, she's fine," Ray says. "We're at 24th and Wabash."

Kowalski exhales hard through his nose, making the line crackle with static. "Okay. Stay there, and I'll call in for somebody to cover your place. I can be there in fifteen minutes." 

"No," Ray says. "Go to the house; Ma and the girls will freak if random uniforms start showing up." 

Kowalski makes a frustrated noise. "What about you and Lucia? How long can you stay there?"

They could probably make it through the weekend, if they had to. Ray's got his panic bag in the trunk, and he keeps Lucia's diaper bag packed like a miniature one, with enough clothes and diapers and formula to last at least a couple days. 

"We can't," Ray says. "I can't. I'm gonna go to O'Hare."

"And then what?" Kowalski says, his voice getting louder.

"Inuvik," Ray says quietly. He hadn't known until the words came out of his mouth that that was what he was gonna do, but he's not really surprised to hear himself say it. Admitting it to Kowalski--that this is just more than he can handle, so that he has to run to Fraser to take care of him--is hard though, and he expects Kowalski to start yelling for real. But Kowalski doesn't say anything all for a few seconds. 

Then he sighs and says, "Yeah, okay. I'll call the detachment with updates."

"We might be stuck in Edmonton for a couple days," Ray says. "Will you tell Frannie for me? She can handle Ma."

"Yeah," Kowalski says. "Yeah, no problem." 

"Thanks for looking after them," Ray says softly. That's his job, he oughtta be there, but if that really was Iorio he saw, then they're safer if he's gone. He hopes his Ma understands that. 

"Sure," Kowalski says. "Tell Fraser I said hi when you get up there, okay?" 

Ray hangs up the phone. Lucia's watching him with big, worried eyes. Ray kisses her forehead. 

"It's okay," he says. "We're gonna go visit your uncle Benny." 

It takes ten minutes for Ray to work himself up to opening the door and stepping outside. His blood is roaring in his ears as he puts Lucia into the backseat and pulls away from the curb. Then they're swept up in the traffic, and Ray puts the Ford onto the Kennedy Expressway, heading west. He counts down the passing exit numbers like he's saying the rosary. 

At O'Hare, he pays for valet parking, ignoring the looks from the staff. Ray knows all about the dangers of airport parking garages. He grabs their panic bags out of the trunk, and carries Lucia in her carseat straight to the booking office. Everything feels kind of blurry and distant, like it's happening to somebody else. That's good though, because if Ray lets himself start thinking about it too hard, he's going to realise what an insane plan this is. 

The woman in the booking office looks skeptically at Ray's haggard appearance and their measly luggage, but Ray says, "Family emergency," as apologetically as he can, and like magic, her face melts into sympathy. 

"I can't book you standby for the Edmonton to Yellowknife leg of the trip," she says, showing him the available itineraries. "But you should be able to get a flight out the next morning." 

"Great," Ray says. "Thanks." He pays for the tickets with the credit card out of his panic bag, registered to Herman Lagoria. It'd been one of the things the Bookman kept in his panic bag in Vegas, and Ray'd managed to hang onto it in the confusion of having his cover blown, just in case. 

The booking agent smiles at him and slides a pair of tickets across the desk. "Here you go, sir, your flight will be departing from gate C at six-thirty. Have a nice flight!" She waves at Lucia, who pouts back, still annoyed and worried by the sudden upheaval of her routine. 

It's hell, being in the wide-open, crowded terminal, but Ray tries to remind himself that it makes them safer. He's just another sleep-deprived traveller here, nothing to look at twice. Nobody knows they're here; they just have to make it onto the plane, and then--well, Ray's plan is kind of vague on the specific details after that, but he's got five hours in the air between Chicago and Edmonton to figure something out. 

He finds a spot where he can see everybody lining up to get on their flight and sits down with Lucia in his lap, counting down the minutes til boarding. 

*

They land in Inuvik on Monday afternoon. There's still snow on the ground, although it's getting patchy and it looks like the river isn't frozen solid any more. While they're waiting to disembark, Ray wrestles Lucia back into her puffy new coat from the outdoor store in Edmonton. It makes her look like a marshmallow. She's got tiny mittens and a fuzzy hat with a bobble on top too. It might be a little bit much--one of the other four passengers is giving Ray a skeptical look--but he figures it's better safe than sorry. Besides, he's too damn tired to care what some stranger thinks. 

This is the fourth plane they've been on since Saturday, and Ray can't remember the last time he slept more than four hours at stretch. Lucia's kept up a general low-grade level of whining and fussing since they got on the plane in Chicago, and hasn't been getting much more sleep than Ray. They're both just about at the end of their rope. But it's all almost over. Fraser'll take charge, like he always does, and for a little while at least, things will be okay. The thought makes Ray smile tiredly as he hefts their bags and carries Lucia carefully down the landing steps. 

Fraser's not there. Ray hadn't realised that he'd been expecting him to be, to somehow _know_ , even though the best Ray had been able to do was leave a message late on Sunday night from Yellowknife, but he had, he'd expected to step out onto the tarmac and have Fraser there, with a smile and an Inuit story. And now Ray's on his own here at the Inuvik airport, running off nothing but a package of airline peanuts and about six hours of sleep over the last three days, with a cranky infant and no idea how to get into town. 

Some of the rising sense of hopelessness he's feeling must show on his face, because the pilot eventually comes over and says, "Do you two want a lift?" 

"That'd be great," Ray says, and follows the guy out to his truck. 

Inuvik comes up in a sprawl of squat, colourful buildings with a web of pipes running in between them. There's still snow on some of the roofs and in the yards, but the streets are mostly a wash of mud and dirty snowmelt puddles. 

"Could you drop us off at the RCMP detachment?" Ray asks. The guy nods agreeably. They pass a church shaped like an igloo that Ray recognises from Fraser's stories and a place called the Eskimo Inn. The RCMP detachment is in a square, two-storied grey building, a little ways from the centre of town. 

"Here you go," the guy says. "If you're in town later, you should drop by Margie's diner. Tell her that Mike sent you."

"Sure thing, Mike," Ray says. "Thanks." 

Mike helps him get his bag out of the back and then drives off with a wave. 

Ray squares his shoulders, tries to ignore the fact that he's been wearing the same clothes since Saturday, and pushes open the door. Inside, the RCMP detachment is just about the same as every other police station he's ever been in, except maybe a little quieter. 

There's a woman wearing the blue uniform that Fraser hates so much sitting behind a desk, so Ray drops the bags on one of the empty chairs and goes to see if she can point him towards Fraser. 

To his surprise, she knows who he is when he introduces himself. "Of course, you're Corporal Fraser's old partner from Chicago! We saw everything about the business with the submarine in the paper," she says, and then looks at him again. "Only, I thought that--" 

"Long story," Ray says. "So is Fraser around somewhere?" 

"I'm afraid he's not been in yet today," she says. "He's gone out to to the Garnetts' to handle that business with the moving property line." 

Ray sighs. 

"But I expect he'll be back in a hour, maybe two at the most," she says, smiling at him. "Why don't I get Jacob to take you down to Margie's, so you and the little one can get something to eat while you wait. I'll let Corporal Fraser know where you are as soon as he gets back." 

Which, okay, maybe that's just how things work in a town the size of a couple of city blocks in Chicago. Or maybe it's because of Lucia. Ray's tired enough and hungry enough that he doesn't really care. 

Margie's turns out not to be so different from any of the hundreds of diners Ray's used to in Chicago, except the menu is full of things like "caribou chili" and "dried Arctic char," in addition to the normal stuff like French fries and deli sandwiches.

The woman who comes over to take his order is in her fifties, round-faced and smiling, and Ray's not particularly surprised to discover that she's the Margie the place is named after. She beams at Lucia. 

"Aren't you precious?" Margie coos, reaching down to tickle Lucia's socked feet. Lucia gives her a tentative smile, glancing back at Ray to make sure he's not going anywhere. "What brings the two of you to Inuvik?"

"Visiting Corporal Fraser," Ray says. A couple of the diner's other patrons are looking at them curiously. 

"Oh, you must be his old American partner!" Margie says. "We heard all about that business with the submarine." She pats his hand. "What'll you have, then?" 

Ray orders a cup of coffee and a bowl of tomato soup with grilled cheese, because he's not totally sure that the hamburgers aren't made out of moose, and tries not to look too relieved when Margie stops chattering happily about the submarine thing and goes to put the order in. While he's waiting, Ray gives Lucia her bottle, and then alternates between feeding her spoonfuls of pureed peaches and trying to eat his own lunch left-handed. 

Afterwards, he leaves a handful of bills on the table for Margie and takes Lucia to the bathroom to clean her up. When he comes back, there's a fresh cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin next to his change. Margie winks at him from behind the counter. The other patrons have mostly moved on; there's one older guy reading the newspaper in the corner, but otherwise, Ray and Lucia have the place to themselves. 

Fraser and Dief show up just as Lucia's starting to get frustrated with Ray for not letting her dump out the salt and pepper shakers. Ray's first glimpse of Fraser is through the foggy panes of glass on the diner door, looking as perfect and capable as ever. His heart turns over. Fraser stops in the doorway to stomp the mud and snow off his boots, but Dief zooms right over, whuffing curiously at Lucia's hair before sticking his nose in Ray's pocket. 

"You haven't changed a bit, huh?" Ray says, giving him the other half of the blueberry muffin as he stands up. Lucia shrieks and tries to grab Dief's tail.

Fraser is grinning at him, the same wide-open, joyful grin that Ray remembers from the Hotel California, only it's _brighter_ than Ray remembers, like maybe Ray's brain figured no way any actual human being could really look that perfectly happy to see him, and so it toned the memory down to a more reasonable level. But he hadn't been wrong, because Fraser looks just like that now, like seeing Ray is about the best thing that could've happened to him. 

Fraser strides across the diner and hugs Ray, a little awkward and sideways, with Lucia sandwiched between them. She makes a protesting noise, and Fraser steps back, but keeps his hand on Ray's shoulder. 

"It's real good to see you, Benny," Ray says. 

"And you, Ray," Fraser says. "Both of you." Then he makes the ridiculous puffin-face at Lucia, who giggles at him, and Ray laughs so hard he cries. 

"Let me help you carry your bags out to my truck," Fraser says, when Ray's wheezing and wiping his eyes. "That is, if you don't have arrangements already--"

"Nah, we just got here," Ray says. 

"Then you're certainly welcome to stay with me," Fraser says. "I even have hot and cold running water at the cabin."

"Wow," Ray says, grinning. "You're really cutting loose there, Fraser." 

Fraser smiles, and the crinkles framing his eyes are exactly how Ray remembers them. The way his stomach goes warm and kind of fluttery is familiar too, but he's too tired to pay much attention to that right now.

Fraser's eyes narrow at the sight of their measly baggage, but he piles it up in the back of his beat up four-by-four without comment. Dief hops into the back beside Lucia and rests his chin on her lap, suffering to have his ears played with. Fraser keeps looking at Ray out of the corner of his eyes, and Ray knows that there's no way he's missed how bad Ray looks. There's a little worried line carving itself between his eyebrows. 

"Ray, I don't mean to pry, but--"

"Can we wait til we get there?" Ray says, and Fraser flinches a little. "I don't mean--I'll tell you everything, Benny, you got a right to know. But can it maybe wait til after I've tested out your cabin's new-fangled indoor plumbing?" 

"Yes, of course," Fraser says. "We'll be there in about fifteen minutes; I'm situated quite close to the main town." Ray snorts. Only Fraser would consider a cabin at least ten miles from his nearest neighbour being situated close to town. 

The cabin is bigger than Ray had been expecting, with an actual covered front porch and a shed around the back, probably for a sled team. 

Inside, it's chilly, but Fraser goes straight to the enormous black stove and begins stoking up the banked fire. The front room is a combination of kitchen, dining room, and den, with a worn, comfortable looking couch sprawled out along one wall and a rough wooden table opposite. Fraser must do his cooking on the woodstove, because Ray sees a big stainless steel sink and a tiny old-fashioned fridge, but no oven. There's a picture of Lucia stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a maple leaf. A couple of doors lead to what Ray figures are Fraser's bedroom and a spare, with the fancy modern bathroom in the middle.

"Nice place you got here, Fraser," Ray says. "Comfy." 

"I'm quite fond of it, yes," Fraser says. He's looking at Lucia, who's checking the place out with interest. "If you'd like to go ahead and shower, I'll look after Lucia." 

"You wanna hang out with your uncle Benny for a little while?" Ray asks her, holding her out to Fraser. 

"I'm looking forward to making your acquaintance," Fraser tells her seriously. Lucia gives Ray a doubtful look before getting distracted by the shiny buttons on Fraser's uniform. 

Fraser shows Ray into the bathroom through the spare room, which is empty, without so much as a rug on the sanded floorboards. 

"I keep meaning to turn it into a proper guest room," Fraser says, not quite meeting Ray's eyes. "But Maggie--my sister, it's a rather long story--doesn't get much time to travel, and I've been very busy these last couple of months." That's maybe true, but Ray knows Fraser, and he knows the real truth of it is that he hadn't really expected anybody else to want to see him enough to come visit. Poor Benny. Ray really should have done a better job of staying in touch with him after he got back to Chicago. And what kind of friend is he that Fraser had a sister turn up out of the blue, and this is the first Ray's heard about it? 

"Maybe I can help you set it up while I'm here," he says, trying to clear away that shadow of sadness hanging over Fraser's expression. 

"I'd like that," Fraser says with a small smile. "Here you are. There are towels and facecloths under the sink." 

Fraser's bathroom is bare basics, and the shower is just a narrow little stall like the ones in the gym. But the water comes out scalding hot and the water pressure isn't half bad. Ray sags against the cold tile and lets the spray beat down on his shoulders. He doesn't stay in as long as he really wants to, because he has no idea how big Fraser's water tank is or how much it costs to heat it. Afterwards, he shaves and brushes his teeth, puts on the clean cold-weather clothes he'd bought in Edmonton. It's not stuff he would've ever been caught wearing in Chicago, but it looks okay, and at least he's warm.

In the front room, he can hear Fraser talking to Lucia, too low to make out. When Ray comes out of the bathroom, Fraser's just finished pinning up a cloth diaper and is changing her into a fresh outfit. 

"You just happen to have a bunch of diapers lying around?" Ray asks, raising an eyebrow. 

"I sometimes baby-sit Nancy Tulugaq's twins," Fraser says, a touch defensively. "You know, Ray, cloth diapers really are the most sensible option up here." 

"Okay, okay," Ray says, holding up his hands. "But if they leak, it's gonna be your problem." 

Fraser spreads a blanket out on the floor for Lucia and pulls her caribou bone toy and her stuffed wolf out of her diaper bag. He gives Ray this kind of surprised, pleased look, like he hadn't really expected Ray to let her keep the caribou toy.

"She still mostly thinks it's for chewing on," Ray says. "Maybe you can teach her how to play with it." 

"Of course," Fraser says. "And the husky?"

"Present from Kowalski," Ray says. Something flickers in Fraser's eyes at the mention of Kowalski's name, but Ray pretends not to see it. "He figured it looked like Dief." 

"It does, a little," Fraser agrees. Dief comes over from his pile of blankets in the corner, sniffing at the toy, and Lucia reaches for him eagerly. "Yes, go on," Fraser says. "She's very young and has just travelled a long way. You can afford to indulge her a little." 

Dief makes a grumbling noise, but leans over to lick a stripe up Lucia's cheek. She looks shocked at first, like she isn't sure whether or not she's going to cry, but then she grins and topples forward to wrap her arms around his neck, pressing her face against his fur and gurgling happily. Dief sighs and lies down so she can crawl on him. 

Fraser's trying real hard to pretend he's just watching the two of them being adorable, and not waiting for Ray to tell him why he decided it'd be a good idea to pick up this tiny, helpless kid and fly three thousand miles north without any kind of warning. Ray doesn't even know where to start. 

"You talked with Kowalski any lately?" Ray asks, because that would make it easier, if Kowalski had already started filling in some of the story, given him a jumping off point. 

"Not for about a week," Fraser says. "I was out on patrol until yesterday evening." 

Christ, had it only been a week ago that Ray was sitting on Kowalski's couch eating Chinese and watching baseball? And now he's on Fraser's couch in the Arctic, watching his daughter roll around on the floor with a wolf. Ray scrubs his hands over his face. 

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Fraser offers. "Or coffee?" 

What Ray would really like is some whiskey, but he figures that's a pretty long shot with Fraser. 

"Coffee would be good," Ray says, and Fraser smiles encouragingly at him before walking across the room to fill up the kettle. He brings back a cup of coffee, dark and bitter the way Ray used to drink it before Vegas. And like that's the straw that broke the camel's back, Ray's spilling out everything from the last two months, not just the case stuff, but everything he couldn't say over the phone or in a letter, the stuff that it's been killing him to keep bottled up inside, and Fraser just sits there and takes it all in. Ray tells him everything, how he'd fucked up things with his family, with Kowalski, with the people it was his job to keep safe, until there just wasn't anything left for him in Chicago. Everything, except for the messy specifics of how he'd ruined his partnership with Kowalski. He can't tell Fraser that, doesn't want to know how Benny's face would look if he knew about that. 

"You know, I'm not even sure I did see Pete Iorio," Ray says finally, his voice hoarse from all the talking. "But in the end, it doesn't really matter, because it was gonna happen anyway. I was at the end of my rope. All I did since I came back from Vegas was let people down 'cause I wasn't strong enough to put it behind me, to get it together, and I just--I had to get away from that." He looks at Lucia, falling asleep curled up on the blanket next to Dief. "And Lucy...she deserves so much better than what I've got to give her, but I couldn't leave her." 

Fraser's still just watching him, and the look on his face is so soft and understanding that Ray has to look away. He wants Fraser to touch him, to put his arms around him and hold him until Ray feels less like he's going to fall apart. But he doesn't know how to ask for that, doesn't know if it would be crossing a line, and he's so tired that even thinking about it is too much. So he puts his coffee cup down on the table and picks Lucia up, holding her against his shoulder as she squirms a little and then falls back asleep. Fraser's quiet for such a long time that it startles Ray a little when he finally does say something.

"Not strong enough? Ray, I can't think of any standard by which you could be found lacking in strength." 

Ray snorts. "Handing in my badge and running away, that looks like strength to you?"

"What you did in Las Vegas took an enormous amount of courage and sacrifice. That you were able to come back from that experience and find it within yourself to take responsibility for a child--to open your heart to her simply because she needed you-- _that_ looks like strength to me."

"You're making it sound like this big, noble thing, but I didn't have any idea what I was doing, Benny. I still don't."

"That's all right," Fraser says. "'You're doing your best, and that will be enough." 

No way can it be that simple, but Fraser's smiling proudly at him, and Ray's already done all kinds of stupid, impossible things for that smile. Maybe he can do this too.

 

*

That evening, Fraser heats up a pot of chili for dinner. Ray has a hunch that the unidentified meat in it is caribou, but he's not asking and Fraser's not telling. Whatever it is, it's definitely better than airline food. Fraser's taken a page out of Ma's book and keeps offering him seconds, until Ray's going to explode if he eats another bite. 

Afterwards, Fraser refuses to let Ray help clean up, so he takes Lucia back to the blanket and pulls the ball out of her diaper bag; rolling it back and forth is still pretty much her favourite game. Dief, who wouldn't be caught dead playing fetch in Chicago, comes over and noses at the ball, pushing it away from Lucia and then chasing it down and bringing it back. After a couple of false starts, she figures out how the game works, giggling every time Dief drops the slobbery ball back into her lap. She looks over at Ray to see if he's impressed with her new talent. He grins and gives her a thumbs up.

"You're such a pushover," Ray says to Dief, who turns his back and goes after the ball again, tail waving jauntily. Over at the sink, Fraser's trying and failing not to snicker. 

Eventually, Dief gets bored with the game, and Ray pulls Lucia into his lap and leans back against the sofa. 

"I'm sorry there's no television," Fraser says. "I do have a radio; you might be able to pick up a basketball commentary?" 

"Nah, that's okay," Ray says. "Hey, is there a library in town? I didn't bring any of Lucia's picture books." 

"Certainly," Fraser says. "We can stop by tomorrow; I let Sophie know that I'd be taking a personal day or two." 

"Hey, you don't gotta do that, we'll be fine." Fraser gives him a look. "Okay, okay. Thanks. Frannie's always going on about how important it is to read to her." But even without Frannie's nagging, Ray probably would've done it anyway. Reading bedtime stories, with Lucia all sleepy and relaxed in his lap, feels like some of the best time he's spent with her. There hasn't been much time for bedtime stories this last week and Ray is looking forward to making up for that. 

"Research does suggest that reading to children is beneficial to their language development," Fraser says. "And shared reading is widely recognised as a rewarding method of bonding as well." He goes over to his bookshelf and looks thoughtfully at what it has to offer. "I'm afraid I don't have any children's books, but she might enjoy the pictures in the _Audubon Field Guide to North American Birds_?"

Ray rolls his eyes. "No thanks, you can bond with her over that one." He's teasing, but Fraser's eyes kind of light up, and he pulls the book off the shelf and comes to sit on the floor next to them, holding out his hands to Lucia in invitation. She settles happily into his lap, and Fraser opens the book to show her a picture of a flamingo and starts reading out loud about its habitat and nesting habits. Lucia pops her thumb into her mouth and studies the pictures intently, as Fraser goes from flamingoes to puffins to something called a grackle. 

Ray couldn't care less about grackles, but Fraser reading to Lucia, that he apparently cares about a whole lot, because he can't look away. Fraser glances up and sees Ray watching them like it's overtime at a Bulls game or something, and gives him that goofy grin that Ray's only seen a handful of times, the one that means Fraser's let down every one of the damn walls he puts up to keep people from getting at the real him. Ray's heart rate speeds up, and for the first time in way, way too long, it's not because he's scared or angry. 

Fraser's cheeks start turning pink, and Ray claps his hands together. "Okay, Lucy, time for bed." He picks her up, and Fraser jumps to his feet. 

"I'll just go put fresh sheets on the bed, and empty out a drawer for Lucia."

Ray blinks at him. "We're not kicking you out of your bed, Benny. And what on earth is the drawer for?" 

"Well, it's not unheard of to improvise a crib out of a suitably roomy dresser drawer," Fraser says. "I can think of several examples, including some from my own childhood, although those are of course hear-say as I was far too young to actually remember--"

"Fraser," Ray interrupts. "You were also born in a barn. You're not exactly making a convincing argument here." 

"I assure you she'll be perfectly comfortable," Fraser says. "It's much warmer in here than in the bedroom, and it really isn't safe for her to sleep under all those blankets." 

He's got Ray there. "Fine," Ray says, holding up his hands. "She can sleep in the drawer. But I'm still taking the couch." 

Fraser lines the drawer with a couple of heavy blankets and sets it in the middle of the kitchen table. "She'll be warmer off the ground," he explains. 

"Is it ever gonna get dark?" Ray asks, arranging the pile of sheets and blankets Fraser had given him. Outside, it looks like it's three o'clock in the afternoon. 

"We'll have a couple of hours of darkness after midnight," Fraser says. "I'll go ahead and draw the black out curtains." 

Ray settles Lucia into the drawer on the table with her stuffed wolf and fumbles his way back to the couch. He hears Fraser's footsteps pause in the doorway. 

"I'm glad you came, Ray," he says. 

"Me too," Ray says. "Night, Benny."

"Goodnight, Ray. Goodnight, Lucia." 

Ray drifts off to the sound of the fire cracking and settling in the stove and the soft noises Dief and Lucia make in their sleep. 

He wakes in the middle of a dream about Pete Iorio standing in Ma's kitchen, with his heart trying to climb up out of his throat and drenched in cold fear sweat. He tries to thrash his way out of the twisted up blankets and winds up falling onto the floor with a thump. Dief wakes up with a bark, growling over in his corner; Lucia lets out a startled whimper, and then starts screaming. 

"Ray?" Fraser comes out of his room, a pale wash of light spreading out from the open doorway, and goes straight over to Lucia and picks her up. "Shh, you're all right." He pats her back and comes to kneel on the floor next to Ray, who's finally managed to extricate himself from the blankets and is sitting up, his arms wrapped around his knees, trying to stop shaking.

"Sorry," Ray mumbles, his face getting hot. Jesus, bad enough showing up on Fraser's doorstep uninvited, now Ray's waking him up at all hours with nightmares, like a little kid. 

"It's perfectly fine," Fraser says. "Do you want--that is, if it would help, I'm more than willing to--" 

"Nuh uh," Ray says. He does any more talking than he already has, and it doesn't matter how far away he is from Chicago, he's gonna lose it. 

"Okay," Fraser says, and he just sits there, still holding Lucia, and doesn't say a word until Ray's breathing is back to normal, and his eyelids are starting to get heavy again. "Go back to sleep, Ray." Ray obediently climbs back onto the couch. Fraser walks Lucia up and down the room a couple of times, and Ray thinks he maybe hears him singing to her, real soft, but he might be imagining it. He's asleep again before Fraser goes back into his room and closes the door.

*

The next time Ray wakes up, it's to the smell of bacon frying and the sound of Fraser and Lucia carrying on some kind of conversation at the table. Ray grins into his pillow. Fraser talks to her exactly the same way he does Dief, only with a lot less snark. 

"I'm afraid beets are the only thing available at the moment besides formula," Fraser is saying. "That attitude will get you nowhere--you should at least try them before you turn up your nose." Lucia makes an indignant noise, and Dief whines in sympathy. "There, you see? They're not that bad." 

Ray makes a face. "Don't listen to him, Lucy, he licks mud," Ray says, getting up to join them at the table. "Hang on, I'll get you a bottle." 

There's hot water in the kettle, and Ray makes himself a cup of instant coffee, trying not to feel self-conscious when he adds milk and sugar to it. The bacon's almost done, and Fraser's got buckwheat pancakes waiting under the warmer.

"In addition to the library, I thought we might stop by the community centre and see if anybody has a spare crib and possibly a high chair for Lucia to borrow," Fraser says, when Ray's on his second cup of coffee, and Lucia's finishing up her bottle. "Is there anything else the two of you would like to do around town this morning?" 

Lucia needs baby food that isn't beets, and more formula, and extra diapers. Ray ticks each item off on his fingers as he runs through his mental list. "And probably more clothes, too. How long until the snow's all melted?" 

"Another week, at the outside," Fraser says. "What she has should be fine for now." He hasn't asked how long Ray's planning to stay, which is good, because Ray hasn't got any idea and is mostly trying not to think about it. "The general store will have everything else, and we can stock up on groceries while we're there." 

Somehow, even though Inuvik, with its single stoplight and muddy streets, is as unlike Chicago as it's probably possible to be, Ray can't help looking over his shoulder when they get out of Fraser's truck, like it's just a matter of time before Vegas catches up with him again, even three thousand miles away in the middle of frozen nowhere. 

Fraser doesn't say anything, but it's a pretty sure bet he notices. His arm keeps brushing up against Ray's as they walk into the library, and Ray feels every single touch like an electric jolt, even through all of their layers of wool and fleece. 

The library's pretty small, just a couple of rooms in a building that's basically a glorified trailer, but the shelves are densely packed, and the corner for the kids' books has a brightly coloured rug and a bunch of squishy beanbag chairs scattered around. Fraser goes off to return his own books and talk to the librarian behind the desk, and Ray puts Lucia down on one of the beanbags and starts collecting books. His strategy pretty much boils down to grabbing anything that doesn't look too stupid or sappy, with a handful of some of the educational ones about things like Canadian history and Arctic wildlife, in case Fraser wants to do some more reading with her too. 

"These look good?" Ray asks Lucia, fanning them out in front of her, and takes the happy giggle-shriek noise she makes for a yes. 

After Fraser signs out their books, they head to the community centre. It's not very busy this time of morning, but there are some older ladies sitting in the corner, quilting, and a couple of kids too young to be in school running around. Fraser introduces Ray and Lucia to the lady who runs the place, Mrs Tulugak, with the twins that Fraser watches sometimes. She's happy to loan them the centre's portable playpen and a highchair for Lucia, as long as they bring them back for movie nights and the potlatch next week. She seems to assume that Ray's visit will be lasting indefinitely. 

Ray catches a glimpse of the RCMP detachment as they drive through town, and interrupts Fraser's story about the history and significance of the community greenhouse to say, "We need to swing by your office real quick and check your messages." 

"Certainly," Fraser says, and flips on his right turn signal. 

The same junior mountie is sitting behind the desk, and she makes a disapproving face when she sees Fraser.

"Weren't you taking a personal day, Corporal Fraser?" she says, kind of pointedly.

"Of course, and I'm sure you have everything in hand, Sophie. We're just stopping by briefly to see if there's been any word from Chicago."

Sophie gives him a suspicious look, but pulls a couple of pieces of mail out of a drawer. "Just these, and a Detective--" she glances at a pad of paper by her elbow--"Kowalski from the Chicago police called this morning." Ray's heart gives an anxious kick and he locks his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

Fraser tucks the mail into his pocket and says, "Thank you, Sophie. I'll just return his phone call while I'm here." 

Sophie sighs.

Fraser leads the way into his office and shuts the door. Lucia's fussing with her mittens and keeps trying to fling her hat onto the floor, so Ray sits down with her in one of the chairs to take them off and unzip her coat. 

Fraser's dialing and then frowning a little. "Hello, Ray, I'm returning your phone call. I'll try your other numbers." 

"His cellphone must be turned off," Fraser says to Ray, dialing again. He leaves the same message on Kowalski's home phone, and then gets the new civilian aide at the 2-7.

"Hello, Marta," and of course Fraser knows the new civilian aide's name, even though he'd already been gone a month before she came to work there. "Is Detective Kowalski at the station?" 

Ray can tell by the wrinkle in between Fraser's eyebrows that he's not, and Ray's trying not to worry about all the things that could happen to a cop without a partner there to watch his back, when Fraser says, "Certainly," and then, "Yes, sir. Ah, just a moment." Fraser puts his hand over the mouthpiece and says quietly, "Lieutenant Welsh would like to speak with you directly if possible, Ray."

Ray's got a feeling that if he shook his head, Fraser would politely insist that Ray was unable to come to the phone, no matter how mad it made Welsh. But Ray needs to know if his family are okay and he needs to know what's going on with Kowalski, and so he swaps Fraser Lucia for the phone, leaning against the corner of Fraser's desk because his knees are kind of shaky. 

"Vecchio."

"Detective. The Las Vegas Police Department got in touch yesterday afternoon and provided photographic evidence that Pete Iorio was in Vegas this weekend. To the best of their knowledge, he still is." The Lieu's voice is just about as gentle as Ray's ever heard it, and he really fucking hates it. "There's nothing to indicate a threat to your family's well-being." 

"Right. Thanks for looking into that, sir," Ray says. "What about Kowalski, is he--I mean, how's the Morello case going?" 

"Kowalski's off the case," Welsh says. "Detectives Huey and Dewey are wrapping things up. I imagine things'll go pretty much as expected." 

Ray wants to ask for more information about Kowalski, but that's not really his business anymore, and he can't think of a way to do it that doesn't sound pathetic. 

"Thanks, Lieu," Ray says. Welsh grunts in acknowledgement and hangs up. 

"Is everything all right?" Fraser asks, pulling Lucia's hand away from the cup of pens on his desk. 

The initial glow of relief that everything is okay at home is fading into a furious humiliation at having fallen apart so spectacularly over nothing. Ray rubs a hand over his face.

"Sure, everything's fine," he says. "I mean, turns out I scared Ma and the girls out of their minds and dragged Lucy across the half the continent for no good reason, but, you know, nobody's dead." 

Fraser looks at him soberly for a second and then glances down at Lucia, sulking about not being allowed to wreak havoc with his desk supplies. 

"You did what you thought was necessary at the time," Fraser says finally. "And, well, I hope you'll forgive me for being glad that it brought the two of you here." 

"Yeah," Ray says. "I think we can do that, Benny." 

Fraser smiles at him, and Ray feels an unexpected rush of warmth and ducks his head bashfully to try to hide it.

*

Back at Fraser's cabin, Ray puts himself in charge of making lunch and putting away the groceries they'd bought at the general store.

"You made breakfast," Ray says, when Fraser keeps trying to protest. "It's my turn." Mostly, though, it's because he needs something to do with his hands, to let out some of the jittery, nervous energy that's been building up since they left the detachment. Fraser makes Lucia a bottle and sits down with her at the table, reading his mail while he feeds her. 

"I can't believe I'm making Ma's pasta sauce out of canned tomatoes," Ray complains. "She'd disown me if she knew." He's been keeping up a steady stream of low-grade bitching while he cooks, and Fraser's been patiently explaining the intricacies of the food supply chain north of the Arctic circle, and Ray's been ignoring him, and it all feels comfortable, like the good old days, going back and forth at each other in the Riv. But this time Fraser doesn't say anything, and Ray glances over his shoulder at him. 

Fraser's put down the letter he'd been reading and is looking down at Lucia with an expression Ray can't quite figure out, something surprised and happy and wondering. His eyes are sort of shiny. Ray's got no idea what's going on. Lucia hasn't done anything special; she's slurping down the last of her formula with single-minded focus. 

"I'd be honoured to be her godfather, even unofficially," Fraser says, like they'd been having a conversation Ray wasn't aware of. Ray blinks at him, and Fraser rubs a thumb over his eyebrow. "That is, if you still want me to be." He looks from Ray to the letter and back again, and everything clunks into place. Ray had completely forgotten about sending that letter, what felt like half a lifetime ago. 

"Yeah, of course I do, Benny," Ray says, touched by how much it seems to matter to Fraser. 

"I'm afraid I don't have any first-hand experience with this particular societal institution," Fraser says to Lucia, sort of apologetically. "There will be a learning curve for both of us." 

Ray rolls his eyes. "It's not rocket science," he says. "You're already doing better than my Uncle Nunzio." One of Pop's drinking buddies down at the pool hall, his idea of successful god-parenting had involved telling eight-year-old Ray stories about the old days and the Forty-Two Gang that gave him nightmares for days afterwards.

"It's an immense amount of responsibility," Fraser says primly, but the effect is kind of ruined by the dopey smile he's directing towards Lucia. If Ray's stomach is going to keep on with these kinds of acrobatics, it could probably go for the gold in the next Olympics. He tries to ignore it and turns his full attention back to the pasta sauce in a hurry. After Lucia finishes her bottle, Fraser gets up and puts the two new pictures of her up on the fridge.

Even with canned tomatoes, lunch is pretty good. Fraser declines Ray's offer to feed Lucia, managing to keep her from getting applesauce in her hair and eat his own spaghetti without getting a drop of sauce on his shirt. A little bit does find its way onto his chin, though, and Ray only realises he's staring when Fraser trails off in the middle of whatever story he's telling, looking at Ray uncertainly, his cheeks flushing.

"You, uh, you got sauce, here," Ray says, demonstrating on his own face. Fraser stares at him for a second, and then his mouth firms and he gets that little determined line between his eyebrows. He swipes the sauce away with his thumb and then pops it into his mouth. His eyes have gone all dark and heavy-lidded, and his tongue sweeps across his lower lip as he pulls his thumb away. 

He's doing it on purpose, Ray realises, and his jaw actually drops a little. He looks down at his plate, overwhelmed. The possibility had always kind of been there, but for Fraser to just put it out in the open like that, all at once, Ray hadn't been expecting that, and it hits him a hell of a lot harder than his fantasies had ever prepared him for. Fraser wants him, badly enough to lay it out on the line with some bad seduction moves straight out of a trashy romance novel. Ray's never been happier about being able to give Fraser something he wants.

"Ray?" Fraser sounds worried, and when Ray looks up, he's lost that dark, tempting look. He's running his thumb over his eyebrow and his eyes are wide and anxious. 

"Yeah, Benny," Ray says. "Yeah. Me too." After a second, comprehension dawns across Fraser's face, and his worried expression melts into a sweet smile. 

Lucia bangs on the tray of the high chair, making a disgruntled noise.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Fraser says, and offers her another spoonful of applesauce. He shoots Ray a horrified look. Ray doesn't even try to hide his grin. 

He's too wired with anticipation to finish his spaghetti, but Fraser eats the rest of his own lunch with a sort of distracted determination. Lucia finishes her applesauce and demands to get down onto the floor to play with Dief, who makes a smug, whuffing noise that Ray would swear is a laugh. 

"There's really no excuse for you to be so crude," Fraser says. "Particularly in front of an impressionable child." Ray dumps his leftover spaghetti into Dief's dish to shut him up. 

Finally, after half an hour of expertly conning Fraser into building a series of block towers so that she can knock them down, Lucia starts rubbing her eyes and yawning, looking around for Ray. 

"Come here, _piccolina,_ " Ray says, picking her up. "You wanna finish your book about the polar bear?" 

He curls up with her on the couch and reads the rest of the story to her, while Fraser washes the lunch dishes and interjects occasionally when the story gets something wrong. Lucia drifts off a few pages from the end, but Ray finishes the book anyway. She doesn't wake up when Ray settles her down into the playpen, or when Fraser tucks her toy wolf under the blanket with her. Dief makes another one of those smug, amused noises, and comes over to lie beside the playpen. 

Ray glances at Fraser out of the corner of his eye. Now that this is finally about to happen, he's starting to feel a little panicky. He's just gonna go into Benny's bedroom in broad daylight--and since it's two o'clock in the afternoon, he can't even use being in the Arctic as an excuse for that--and get naked? Oh, God. It's not like he has a whole lot of experience with guys, and this is Benny, this is _important._ There's a lot riding on not fucking this up, like he'd done with Kowalski. He can't afford to lose Fraser. 

"Ray," Fraser says, all low and warm and _happy_. He looks a little nervous, but he's smiling at Ray as he takes a step closer and kisses him. 

"Oh my God, Benny," Ray says, and pushes him towards the bedroom. 

The door has barely closed behind them before Fraser's hands are everywhere, fumbling with the buttons of Ray's shirt, sliding under the waistband of his slacks, digging into his hip to drag him closer. He's still kissing Ray, not just his mouth, but along the lines of his brow and cheekbone, down his jaw and the length of his neck, sucking just this side of too hard at the skin above his collarbone. 

Fraser gets Ray out of his clothes, leaving him in just his boxers and thick socks, and instead of throwing everything on the floor, carefully shakes them out and drapes them over the dresser, giving Ray an amused look over his shoulder. Ray wonders if it's weird that that gives him honest to God butterflies in his stomach. 

The bedroom is pretty cold, so far away from the woodstove, and Ray's shivering by the time Fraser crosses the room back to him, his own jeans and flannel shirt folded neatly next to Ray's. Fraser's hands are hot, guiding Ray towards the bed and bundling him matter-of-factly underneath about seventeen different blankets, yanking them up over their heads like a tent. His grin flashes white in the gloom. 

Fraser's bed's a lot softer than Ray had been expecting. Bigger, too. He stretches til the tips of his fingers poke out into the chill of the room, and grins back up at Fraser.

"This is nice, Benny," he says, and that sounds so stupid, like he's a twelve year old girl and Fraser's just walked him home from church, but Fraser's grin gets impossibly brighter. He ducks his head down to kiss Ray again, a little rougher and more urgent now. 

Ray can't stop touching him, all that broad, warm skin, pale and soft where it isn't scarred from jumping off cliffs and getting stabbed. Or shot. He pauses with his hands splayed out in the middle of Fraser's back, just above where the bullet from his gun is still buried under Fraser's skin. He feels frozen, despite the furnace-warmth Fraser's throwing off. 

Fraser stops kissing him, frowning, and runs his fingertips over the shiny bullet scar on Ray's shoulder, the new one. If Ray rolled over, there'd be a matching scar on his back, older and faded. All of the sudden, Fraser looks shocked and lost and so fucking scared, and Ray can't stand it. 

So he puts one hand on the back of Fraser's neck, pulling him back down, not quite kissing him, their foreheads resting together. His other hand runs those last few inches down Fraser's back, tracing his thumb along the dip of Fraser's spine til he comes to the rough, ugly patch of scar tissue, circling over it gently. 

"Even Steven, remember, Benny?" A little bit of tension goes out of Fraser, and he breathes a tiny sigh against the corner of Ray's mouth. Ray smiles.

"Hey, tell me what you want," he says, because Fraser's been way too quiet this whole time, and Ray doesn't have any idea what to do.

"Kiss me," Fraser says immediately, so Ray does. But it turns pretty quickly into Fraser kissing him, taking charge, licking into his mouth until Ray is panting for it, his hips moving helplessly into empty air. 

"Benny, come on, please," Ray begs, right into Fraser's mouth, not really managing actual words. But Fraser gets it, because he starts kissing his way downwards, pausing to drag his teeth over Ray's nipple--"Ow, Jesus, Benny!" Ray yelps, swatting at his head, and Fraser gives him a sheepish look--before ducking his head to nuzzle at the hair on Ray's chest, inhaling deeply. 

"You still wear the same brand of cologne," Fraser says, not lifting his head, and for a second, Ray forgets about how much he needs Fraser to be touching him. 

Buying a bottle of his old cologne had been one of the first things Ray'd done when they let him out of the hospital, trying anything he could think of to help him remember what it felt like to be Ray Vecchio. He'd kept a bottle of it in his panic bag. 

"You were paying attention, back then?" 

Fraser makes a kind of prissy face, like Ray's insulted the uniform or something, and Ray rolls his eyes. 

"No, I mean, you were paying attention like that. To me." 

"Well, yes, Ray," Fraser says, and slides smoothly down the length of Ray's torso to sink his teeth gently into Ray's hip through his boxers. Ray makes a strangled noise and almost loses it right there. 

"Benny, no, could we maybe--" Disappointment flashes across Fraser's face, and Ray reaches down to grip his shoulder. "I mean, I want this to last a little longer, you know?" he says, feeling kind of sappy. "Maybe we could save that for next time?" The thought of there being a next time--of there maybe being a whole lot of next times--is enough to make Ray kind of dizzy. 

"Of course," Fraser says, and he gives Ray a coy smile, rubbing his cheek against the front of Ray's boxers before sliding them carefully off. He wriggles around for a second, getting rid of his own before he drapes himself over Ray, heavy and warm, rocking against him in a tantalising glide of skin on skin and kissing him, slow and deep and kind of filthy, the way Ray never would've figured he knew how. 

Fraser pulls away after a couple of seconds, smiling down at him, happy, sure, but maybe also a little bit smug, and Ray realises that Fraser is _teasing_ him. 

"Oh God, come on, Benny, you're killing me," Ray groans, pushing up against him, trying to get a little more friction. 

"I thought you wanted to take it slow," Fraser says, trying to give him the big-eyed Mountie look and totally failing on account of how he's naked and breathing hard and his dick is leaking against Ray's belly. 

"Yeah, but not glacial, Jesus," Ray grits, and Fraser laughs, that stupid giggle that always used to take Ray by surprise, and God, for a second Ray's fine with it if he doesn't come any time this decade, as long as he's making Fraser happy. Warmth wells up in his chest and makes his eyes sting. But then Fraser's reaching down between them, wrapping his big, calloused hand around them both, and he's not teasing now. 

"Just like that, Benny," Ray breathes, and Fraser's kissing him again, and this is amazing, this is everything Ray wanted, and afterwards, when Fraser sinks down on top of him Ray wraps his arms around his back and holds on tight. They're gross and sticky, and Fraser's really heavy, making it kind of hard for him to breathe, but Ray doesn't care. He needs this. 

After a little while, Fraser tries to get up, and Ray tightens his arms in protest. 

"I'm just going to the washroom to clean up a little," Fraser says, and Ray reluctantly lets him go. Fraser comes back with a warm washcloth for Ray too, and then flops back down half on top of him, giving him a blissful smile. "Thank you, Ray."

"Don't be stupid," Ray says, and closes his eyes.

He's not quite asleep when Lucia wakes up from her nap and starts chattering at Dief. Fraser smiles against Ray's shoulder, and for a second Ray is so overwhelmingly, perfectly happy that he can't breathe. 

"I'll get her," Fraser says, but he keeps right on lying there, loose and sleepy. Ray's sort of hopefully wondering if Lucia might not talk herself back to sleep if they give her a minute when Dief starts whining excitedly. Lucia makes a worried noise, and then there are two short, sharp raps against the door. 

Fraser's instantly upright and out of bed, pulling on his clothes, but the unexpected interruption has got Ray's heart racing in instinctive fear and he has to force himself to lie still for a second, getting ahold of the panic trying to well up and choke him, urging him to grab Lucia and bolt. He gets dressed, slowly, trying to get his breathing under control. 

In the main room, Dief is yipping like a puppy. Ray gets a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

"Ray!" Fraser sounds shocked, but delighted, the way he had outside that room in the Hotel California. The sinking feeling turns into a full-scale plummet. "What on earth--that is, it's wonderful to see you. Please, come in. That bruise looks quite nasty, wait just a moment and I'll get you some salve for it." 

"Good to see you too, buddy," Kowalski says. "And I don't want any salve, that stuff stinks." Lucia starts yelling happily, and Ray figures he really doesn't have any more excuses for hiding back here.

"Hey, pipsqueak," Kowalski is saying, as Ray comes out of the bedroom. "I missed you." He's holding Lucia, grinning at her. His black eye has started to heal, fading into gross blue and yellow shadows. Fraser, standing next to them, is smiling like this is the best thing that's happened to him since--well, since he walked into Margie's diner yesterday and found Ray and Lucia there. 

Kowalski looks up as Ray comes in, and Ray feels his face heating up. Kowalski's a damn good detective, but he doesn't need to be, not for this. Ray can almost see the pieces clunking into place in his head as he looks from Ray to Fraser and back again. Ray's breathing has gone kind of funny, like there's not quite enough air in the room, and Kowalski's trying real hard not to make eye contact with anybody but Lucia. 

Kowalski showing up here is just about the last thing Ray'd been expecting, and he's completely unprepared for dealing with this level of awkwardness. On top of that, it turns out that his stupid stomach still thinks that turning somersaults is the appropriate response to seeing Kowalski holding Lucia. Fraser's still beaming, but it's starting to fade a little as he looks back and forth between them, like maybe this isn't going as well as he'd been hoping. 

"You're probably tired after your trip, Ray," Fraser says, a little too heartily. "The washroom has hot and cold running water." 

Kowalski blinks at him. "You're real proud of your indoor plumbing, huh, Fraser?" Fraser looks a little hurt, and Kowalski holds up a hand. "Hey, no, I'm not complaining. A shower would be awesome. The bathroom in through here?" 

He passes off Lucia and grabs a beat up looking duffle bag from beside the door, jerking his chin at Ray in acknowledgement as he goes by. Ray waits until the bathroom door clicks closed, and slumps down onto the couch with a groan. 

"I completely understand if you'd prefer to get a hotel room in town," Fraser says, straightening his shoulders into his stiff, defensive Mountie pose that looks really weird with Lucia in his arms. For a second, Ray thinks Fraser's trying to hint that it'd be better if he did that, got out of the way with his kid and his issues and make room for Kowalski, and it feels like a punch to the gut. 

But Fraser's not smiling at all now; he looks totally miserable, and Lucia's wriggling in his arms like maybe he's holding her a little too tight. 

"We can do that, if you want," Ray says carefully. Fraser gives him a wide-eyed look.

"No," he blurts. "No, of course I'd like for you and Lucia to stay, and Ray as well. I would like that very much. That is, if you want to." Whatever Fraser thinks is going on with him and Kowalski--and Ray's not about to ask--it doesn't seem to matter. He just doesn't want to have to choose between his two best friends. Ray really, really wants to know where Fraser thinks this thing between them is going, whether he even thinks they have a thing, but he can't make himself ask. He's too scared of what the answer could be.

Ray really should insist on staying in town, because there's not going to be any way for him and Kowalski to avoid each other in Fraser's tiny cabin, and there's no way this fucked up situation is going to end well. But Fraser's giving him this look that's trying really hard to be casual, except Ray can see the hopefulness swelling up behind it and threatening to bust through. Ray's never been able to say no to Fraser, even when Fraser's refusing to actually ask. He's not gonna start now. 

"Okay," Ray says. "If you're sure." 

Fraser's beaming again, and he tries to hide it, ducking his head, but Lucia just thinks he's smiling at her, and she grins back, giggling and kicking her feet happily. 

The clumsy acrobatic routine that Ray's stomach is doing feels way too familiar, and he only barely manages to resist the urge to groan and bury his face in his hands.

*

When Kowalski comes out of the shower his face is flushed and his hair is standing up in wild, damp spikes. He's barefoot. Ray wonders how upset Benny would be if he changed his mind and went to stay in town after all. 

Lucia's been playing pretty quietly on her blanket, but when she catches sight of Kowalski again, she starts babbling emphatically, waving her ball at him. Kowalski smiles that shiny little kid smile, ruffling her hair on his way to the table.

"I gotta get some caffeine in my system," he tells her. "Then we can play." Fraser slides a cup of coffee and a box of Smarties across the table towards him, and Kowalski makes a blissful noise that seems downright indecent with Lucia in the room. Fraser looks sort of stunned. 

Kowalski seems oblivious. He drops a few of the candies into his coffee and looks over his shoulder at Ray to ask, "You talk to Welsh since you left?" 

Ray can't tell whether or not there's any accusation in the last part of that question, but it makes him feel defensive regardless. "Yeah."

"Your Ma made me promise that I'd have you call her too," Kowalski says. "So you should probably think about doing that." Ray should have already done it, he knows how she worries, especially lately, and with Lucia in the mix, she's probably wearing her rosary beads down to nothing. 

But Kowalski reminding him of all that has got Ray's back up, and he snaps, "Look, if you came all the way up here from Chicago to start trying to tell me what to do, you can turn right back around." 

"What makes you think it had anything to do with you?" Kowalski snaps back, setting his coffee cup down with a thunk. Lucia jumps, and Kowalski looks guilty. 

"Ray," Fraser says warningly, and, "Ray, perhaps it would be better to save this conversation for a later time." 

"Conversation, what conversation?" Kowalski mutters, and lets Fraser set him up for a rant about all the things that were wrong with the flights from Chicago up to Inuvik. "Well, the last leg with Mike wasn't so bad," Kowalski says. "It was just me on the plane, and he said if I wanted to, I could come round sometime while I was here, check out her engine."

There's a weird expression on Fraser's face that Ray can't figure out, but seeing it makes him feel hollow and kind of raw around the edges. He looks away and wonders what Kowalski'd done with the GTO, and whether or not he's got any kind of plan for how long he's going to stay up here. 

The rest of that day is the most awkward experience of Ray's entire life, including the time in ninth grade when Maria caught him making out with Nina Alvarado in the basement and told Ma, who gave him a two hour lecture on sins of the flesh and respecting nice young ladies. Fraser tries to cut the tension by reciting approximately half his repertoire of Inuit stories, but that just means things are boring on top of being awkward. Lucia helps too, more successfully, by roping Kowalski into playing ball with her and showing off how good she is at getting Dief to fetch. Kowalski looks genuinely impressed. 

Ray tries not to pay too much attention to the two of them, but Lucia keeps making these joyful, delighted noises whenever Kowalski does something particularly funny, and every time Ray glances over, Kowalski's giving her that soft, adoring look, and Ray's glance stretches out just a little too long. He's pretty sure the stupid, warm feeling he gets from watching the two of them is written all over his face, but if Fraser notices, he's not giving anything away, and Kowalski's not paying much attention to anybody but Lucia. 

About six o'clock, Fraser heats up more probably-caribou chili and sets the table, tactfully seating himself and Lucia between Ray and Kowalski. He's careful to divide his attention equally between them, and to not bring up anything that might lead to talking about why either of them wound up here in Inuvik. This results in the conversation being mostly about Lucia, Fraser's job at the detachment, and curling.

"The community centre will be airing a televised game this weekend," Fraser says brightly. "If either of you would like to go." 

Ray forgets himself for a second and makes a horrified face at Kowalski, who goggles back, and Ray would almost swear he catches Fraser smirking. Mostly, though, Ray and Kowalski are doing their best to ignore each other. Politely. 

After dinner, Fraser turns on the radio, fiddling with the dial til he finds a hockey game commentary. 

"The Maple Leafs have made it to the Eastern Conference semifinals," he says, and Ray can't help but grin a little at the smug look he shoots at Kowalski, who ignores him, pointedly rolling Lucia's ball back across the floor to her. Ray stakes out the opposite end of the couch and tries to get into one of Fraser's books he'd been paging through earlier. But between Fraser over at the table trying to keep quiet as he cheers on the Leafs and Kowalski having an increasingly ridiculous conversation with Lucia about her pitching technique, Ray's having a hard time focusing. 

"I'm going for a walk," he says, after he's read the same page three times and can't remember a word of it. 

Fraser looks concerned. "Are you sure?"

Ray scowls at him. "I carried your ass through God only knows how many miles of Canadian wilderness. I think I can handle a walk in your backyard." Nevermind that Fraser's backyard is more or less the same wilderness that had nearly killed them a few years ago. Ray's just got to get out of the cabin before he goes insane. 

He doesn't hear Fraser tell the wolf to keep an eye on him, but Diefenbaker whines and trots reluctantly out the door behind Ray. 

"It's great that he's got so much faith in me," Ray mutters. 

All his life, Ray has loved the noise and crowds of Chicago. Sure, the traffic sucked and there was graffiti everywhere and it seemed like the crime rates were only ever going up, but it was his city, where he belonged. Right now, though, out here where the only sound is the melting snow dripping from the trees and where Ray could probably walk for hours and not see another human, he's starting to maybe understand a little of what it is that Fraser loves so much about this place. It's real easy just to look at the world spreading out around him and not think about the choices he has to make or the things that hurt. 

The light doesn't really change, at least not that Ray can tell, but he figures he's been out here for long enough that it would be getting dark, if this were Chicago. He should probably head back; Lucia will be getting ready to go to sleep pretty soon. 

She and Kowalski are nodding off on the couch when Ray comes back inside. Ray grits his teeth and tries to ignore the way Kowalski's legs go on for miles as he slumps lower into the cushions and how the corner of his mouth curls up sleepily when he sees Ray, like he's not awake enough to remember that they're supposed to be ignoring each other.

Fraser's turned off the radio--he's pouting a little; looks like the Leafs didn't do so well--and is sitting at the table reading. He smiles at Ray too though, full-on, and it makes Ray's knees go a little weak for a second. God. He is in so far over his head here. 

"Bedtime, Lucy," Ray says to her, lifting her out of the curve of Kowalski's arm. Kowalski rubs a hand over his face and sits up with a grunt. 

"I'll just set my cot up in the guest room," Fraser says, in that too-bright way that means he's embarrassed and trying to hide it.

"Nuh uh," Kowalski mutters. "I'm sleeping on the couch, Fraser. Comfortable is the first thing on a list of what that cot ain't." 

"You're perfectly welcome to the couch, Ray. I was planning to take the cot myself." 

Kowalski shakes his head a little, like he's trying to wake up the rest of the way. "Yeah, but you got a bed. Big bed." He squints belligerently at Fraser. "It's a little bit late to be pretending that you and Vecchio are just friends, Fraser." 

"I've always found that particular idiomatic expression to be somewhat misleading and perhaps even bordering on offensive," Fraser babbles. "There's no reason why a platonic relationship should be considered less important than a romantic one, indeed--"

"Look, do not do that, Fraser, do not try to avoid the issue by being annoying." Kowalski crosses his arms over his chest, the defiant, don't-give-a-fuck scowl on his face completely at odds with the way he's hunched into himself, like he's bracing to be hurt. "I get how things are, okay? So you guys go right ahead, and maybe do me the _courtesy_ of not acting like I'm too dumb to notice I was everybody's second best. I'll just--I'll be on the couch." 

Fraser looks like he's been slapped across the face. "Ray, I--" He trails off, rubbing hard at his eyebrow. "I think I'll take the cot, in any case," he says to Ray. "You're welcome to the bed, of course." His face is pinched and unhappy, and Ray wants to punch Kowalski for putting that self-loathing look back in Fraser's eyes. Fraser goes into the guest room without another word.

"Funny how I was you for more than a year, and I didn't know anything about this til today," Kowalski says, looking at some point in the air behind Ray's left shoulder. 

"That's because there wasn't anything to know, moron," Ray growls, trying to keep quiet enough to not wake Lucia up. "Me and Benny, we were partners." 

"So? You and me were partners too," Kowalski says. 

"That was different," Ray says. His face is getting hot, and it feels like somebody's squeezing all the air out of his lungs. "That was--it was--" 

"Yeah," Kowalski says softly. "Tell me what it was, Vecchio." 

"I don't _know_ ," Ray says. "I don't have a clue what's going on with anything, okay?"

"Tell me what you want to be going on, then," Kowalski demands. "What do you want?"

"It'd be real nice if you'd shut the fuck up and let me get some sleep," Ray says tiredly. 

Kowalski stares him for a second and then flings himself down onto the couch, curling up facing the cushions. "Sure. Yeah. Night." 

Ray puts Lucia down in the playpen, makes sure she's got her wolf under her blanket with her, and flips the light off on his way out of the room. 

Fraser's bed is huge and cold, and it smells like Fraser and sex and Ray's cologne. Ray thinks about Fraser, lying stiff as a board on his hard, narrow cot, and about Kowalski curled up into himself on the couch, and wonders how the hell any of them are going to come out of this in one piece. 

*

At first, Ray hasn't got a clue what time it is when he wakes up; the blackout curtains make the place way darker than his bedroom in Chicago, and Fraser doesn't have a digital clock. But he can hear Lucia fussing in the main room, normal "I'm awake and I'm bored, come get me and change my diaper and give me breakfast" morning grumpiness, so it's probably about six o'clock. 

Then he hears Kowalski groan and mumble, "Yeah, I hear you. Hang on." For a second, Ray is seriously tempted to let Kowalski handle this and go back to sleep, but the thought makes him uncomfortable. That's too weirdly domestic, too much like this is a sustainable situation with a happy ending. And now that Ray's thinking about it, he's wondering where the hell Fraser is. If he was here, he'd have already been awake and would probably have picked Lucia up before she'd even started thinking about fussing. 

Kowalski's standing next to Lucia's playpen by the time Ray's pulled on some clothes and shuffled out into the main room. He's holding her kind of gingerly, like she might explode, and giving the neat pile of cloth diapers the hairy eyeball. 

A couple of weeks ago, Ray would've made fun of him for being scared to change a diaper. Now, though he just takes Lucia and says, "Make coffee." 

"Stop telling me what to do," Kowalski mutters, but he's already shuffling towards the sink, rubbing his hands through his hair and making it stand up even more crazily. "Where's Fraser?" 

"How the hell should I know?" Ray says. Kowalski scowls at him, like he's a perp being an idiot on purpose. "Look, it's not like we're _married_ , okay? We're not even dating!" Which sounds so stupid, like they're in high school, but Fraser would probably call it _wooing_ or _courting_ or something else even more ridiculous. 

Kowalski's scowl turns into something a little sharper and more dangerous looking. "Right, because Fraser is so into casual sex." 

"Who said anything about casual?" Ray snaps. This is a really stupid conversation to be having in the middle of changing a diaper. "But we didn't exactly get a chance to talk about where this is going, since you decided to show up unannounced and interrupt." 

Kowalski flushes and doesn't say anything else. He counts out six Smarties into his coffee, focusing on it like he's performing brain surgery or something, and burns his mouth trying to drink it too soon. 

Neither one of them says anything while Ray gets Lucia her bottle and pours himself a cup of coffee, or while he's making toast and scrambled eggs. He makes enough for Fraser too, just in case. Kowalski doesn't eat much, just picks at his eggs and shreds his toast into smaller and smaller pieces. 

"So where would it be going?" Kowalski says out of the blue, when Ray stands up to make himself another cup of coffee. "If I hadn't shown up? You planning to stay up here with the kid permanently?" 

"No," Ray says. "I don't know. I'm still just trying to get my head back on straight, and you're not exactly helping with that." 

Kowalski glares at him. "Not like I did it on purpose, Vecchio. I didn't exactly have a lot to go on, coming up here." 

"You could've just stayed in Chicago," Ray says. "You were doing okay." 

To his surprise, Kowalski lets out a snort of laughter. "Vecchio, no offense, but between the PTSD and the sleep deprivation, I'm gonna suggest your judgement was maybe a little bit off there," he says. "It sucked, and it sucked a hell of a lot more without a partner." 

He's giving Ray this real intense challenging look now, with all of his attention behind it, and it's making Ray feel hot and uncomfortable and very, very turned on. 

"You telling me you came up here because of me?" Ray asks. 

"And because of Fraser," Kowalski says. "And Lucia. But yeah." Kowalski's voice is kind of hoarse, but steady. He's still giving Ray that look, and Ray doesn't have a goddamn clue what to say. Nobody, not even Fraser, has ever done anything that big and stupid and desperate because of him. For him. Sure, Kowalski'd admitted there were other reasons, but Ray and Lucia are a package deal, and Fraser'd been up in Canada for more than two months before they wound up there too, and Kowalski hadn't been packing his bags. 

"So what do you want?" Ray asks, giving Kowalski back his question from last night that Ray hadn't been able to answer. 

"Doesn't really matter, does it?" Kowalski says. For just a second the tough guy mask slips, and Ray can see all the raw misery and loneliness underneath. "I'm not gonna get it." 

Christ, they're all so, so screwed.

*

Fraser turns up about an hour later. His cheeks are pink with exertion and cold, but he still looks kind of worn down, like he didn't sleep so good last night. He looks anxiously at Ray, playing on the floor with Lucia, and at Kowalski, who's been pacing the whole cabin and is currently jittering over by the kitchen window. He's watching Fraser out of the corner of his eye, like a nervous animal. 

"Hey Fraser," Ray says. "You have fun communing with the caribou?" 

"It would be extremely unusual to find caribou within walking distance of Inuvik at this point in their migration cycle, Ray," Fraser says. "But, yes, Dief and I did have a very refreshing hike." Dief goes over to the woodstove and whines pathetically. 

"There's breakfast if you want it," Ray says. Kowalski comes over and puts his plate down on the floor for Dief.

"Thank you kindly," Fraser says, kicking off his muddy boots. "I'm sorry for leaving the three of you to your own devices this morning, but I found myself very much in need of some fresh air to clear my head. And Dief was shamefully in need of the exercise, of course." 

"No problem, Benny," Ray says, and Kowalski nods his head jerkily in agreement. Fraser gives the two of them a strained smile and bends down to say hello to Lucia. She gurgles at him, and when he goes to fill up the kettle, she makes a disappointed noise and starts scooting across the floor after him. 

"That's quite an impressive display of mobility," Fraser says, looking at her proudly. He turns back to the stove, and Lucia squawks in dismay. 

"Geez, can't you take a hint, Fraser?" Ray says, and Fraser gives him a wide-eyed look before a grin spreads across his face, and he comes back to pick Lucia up. 

"I'm afraid I misunderstood," he tells her, trying to sound serious, but unable to wipe the goofy grin off his face. "My apologies." She giggles and cons him into letting her curl up in his lap while he eats his breakfast. 

Kowalski's gone back over by the window, trying to pretend like he's not paying attention to them, but Ray recognises that hard, closed-off look on his face, and now that he knows what to look for, he can see the vulnerability and unhappiness that Kowalski's trying so hard to keep hidden away behind it. And Christ, he hates it.

"Hey, Fraser, you think me and Kowalski could borrow your truck for a little while today?" 

Kowalski gives him a sullen, confused look, but Fraser's grinning so broadly it's probably making his face hurt. 

"Certainly, Ray. What did you have in mind?" 

"Thought we might go out to the airfield and see if Mike had time to let us check out the Skyhawk," Ray says, not quite meeting Kowalski's eye. "Beats sitting around watching the snow melt." 

Ray can tell that Kowalski really wants to refuse and pick a fight, but Fraser looks so _hopeful_ , and Kowalski's apparently not any better than Ray at not giving Fraser something he wants. 

"Yeah, sounds good," Kowalski mutters. 

"Excellent!" Fraser says. "I'm more than happy to keep Lucia for the day." He smiles at her, and she beams adoringly back. "I'm given to understand that one of my duties as her godfather is to spoil her shamefully whenever possible." 

Ray wants kiss him, but he forces himself to roll his eyes instead. "I don't even wanna know what that looks like in Canada," he says. 

Ray glances at Kowalski out of the corner of his eye, to see how he's taking this particular revelation, but Kowalski's busy trying to turn the sleeves of his coat right-side out, and has his back to them. His shoulders are tense, but that's not exactly headline news.

"I'm driving," he says, snagging the keys off the hook by the door. Ray doesn't bother to argue.

Fraser brings Lucia to the doorway to wave goodbye, like they're going on a week long expedition. She doesn't look thrilled about Ray leaving without her--as much as she likes Fraser, she's still a little off her game, up here in this new, unfamiliar place--but when Kowalski rolls down the truck window and waves goodbye as they pull away, she smiles a little and waves back before Fraser takes her inside.

By the time they get to the end of Fraser's quarter-mile driveway, Ray's already regretting this decision. Kowalski's glowering in the driver's seat, drumming his hands on the steering wheel, and apparently pretending like he's the only one in the truck. Ray fiddles with the radio, which only picks up three stations, until Kowalski bares his teeth at him and reaches over to flip it off. 

"I'm a goddamn grownup," Kowalski says unexpectedly. Ray raises an eyebrow at him. "I don't need you to take me on a field trip because you feel sorry for me." 

"Good, because that's not what I'm doing," Ray says. "Don't tell me you wanted to sit in that cabin all day, watching Fraser stress out about us hating each other." 

"So you did it because of Fraser," Kowalski says, and Ray doesn't know what tone he was trying for, but he just comes off sounding hurt. Ray hasn't got the first clue what to do with the rush of tenderness that sends through him. 

"I don't like seeing him unhappy," Ray says, and Kowalski's shoulders slump. "I don't like seeing either of you unhappy," he blurts, and then considers pulling a Fraser and flinging himself out of the car. 

"Oh," says Kowalski. He gives Ray the faintest hint of a smile, and reaches over to flip the radio back on. 

*

Out at the airfield, Mike seems thrilled to be able to show off his Skyhawk to a new audience. Ray's not big on planes, but he knows his way around an engine, and the little Cessna's inner workings are a thing of beauty. Kowalski clearly appreciates her too; he's got his hands everywhere, asking all kinds of questions, jumping at the chance to climb into the cockpit to have a look at all the instruments. He keeps giving Ray this wide-open, excited look, and Ray would bet that he looked exactly the same back in 1977, up under the hood of the GTO for the first time. Between that look and the novelty of exploring the Cessna, it's easy for Ray to let his guard down a little, forgetting for a couple of hours how fucked up everything is. There's a streak of engine grease on Kowalski's forehead, and Ray can't stop watching the way his hands move confidently over the metal. A warm, comfortable glow settles somewhere underneath Ray's ribcage.

"Man, I'd love to learn to fly her," Kowalski says, curling his hand around one of the propeller blades. Ray's heart tries simultaneously to climb up his throat and plummet straight down to his feet, and he makes a choking noise. Mike gives him a weird look. Kowalski's expression doesn't change, but his knuckles go white on the propeller. 

"Could always use another pilot," Mike says to Kowalski, looking pleased. "I teach some certification classes myself, if you're interested."

"Nah, I don't think so. I mean, I got no idea how long I'm gonna be up here, and I don't wanna--" Kowalski cuts himself off. "But, uh, thanks for the offer." He slouches back against the plane, fidgeting with the zipper on his coat, his long, grease-stained fingers moving in jerky, restless flickers.

After a minute, Ray realises Mike's asked him a question, something about him learning to fly too. 

"Uh, no thanks," Ray mutters. "One too many crash-landings. Look, Kowalski, I should probably head back and give Fraser a break. You want me to send him back out for you?" 

"No point in wasting the gas," Kowalski says, straightening up and hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his ratty jeans. He's moving just a little too deliberately, knows exactly what he's doing to Ray. Ray really hopes Mike hasn't picked up on it. "Hey, Mike, thanks for letting us have a look at her."

"Any time," Mike says. "Let me know if you change your mind about those pilot lessons!" 

Out in the parking lot, Kowalski asks, "You wanna drive?" and flips the keys at Ray without waiting for an answer. 

Ray tries to keep his eyes on the road, but over in the passenger seat, Kowalski's drumming his hands on the dashboard and fiddling with his bracelet and the whole time, he's watching Ray out of the corner of his eye, like he's just waiting to get a reaction.

"You should've taken Mike up on the pilot lessons," Ray says finally, a couple miles out from Fraser's cabin. "Risking your life in one of those tin cans of his seems like it'd be right up your alley."

"Not much call for bush pilots in Chicago," Kowalski says. There's an edge in his voice warning that Ray's pushing it and promising unpleasantness if he keeps it up. But hey, Kowalski's the one that started this.

"You could get a job up here, though," Ray says. "Fraser would be thrilled." 

"Sure he would be," Kowalski mutters. "And when I'm not flying, I'll, what, babysit Lucia while you and Fraser go on dates and do married people stuff? Yeah, having that rubbed in my face for the rest of my life is real tempting." 

"Hey, it doesn't look like you got any better offers going," Ray says meanly. "But that's not what I meant. It's only a matter of time til me and Lucia are back in Chicago. You could make a living up here, but me, I got nothing." He's been trying not to think about that, but the truth is that eventually he's going to run out of leave, and there's really only one choice he can make. Owning up to that feels like a lead weight settling into his stomach.

Kowalski's staring at him like he's stopped speaking English. They turn into Fraser's driveway, and Ray slows the truck down to a crawl.

"You wouldn't leave Fraser," Kowalski says. 

"I already did," Ray snaps. "Me and Benny, we're real good at leaving. But you--you could stay up here with him, and he needs that. He needs to not be alone up here." 

"So don't leave him, you moron!" Kowalski slams his palm against the dashboard. "What the fuck is wrong with you, that you want to walk away from something half the city of Chicago would give their right arm to have?" 

They're almost to the cabin now. Ray speeds up, jerking the truck into its spot next to the shed and slamming it into park. He should never have gotten into this conversation; they could've kept on pretending for a little while longer, but this is it; after this, there's not going to be any more acting like things are okay. 

"I don't exactly see you jumping at the opportunity," Ray says. "And don't try to tell me there's nothing going on there, I'm not blind." 

"I'm not gonna be anybody's second best," Kowalski growls, clenching his fists on his lap. "Maybe Fraser wants me, but he wanted you first, and he wants you more. I'm not gonna stay up here so the two of us can make do because you're too dumb not to walk away."

"I don't have any goddamn choice," Ray says, climbing out of the truck and slamming the door way too hard behind him.

"Bullshit," Kowalski says, coming around the back of the truck to cut him off. "That is bullshit and you know it. What's keeping you in Chicago? Frannie and Maria are grownups. They took care of things while you were gone, and they can keep on doing it." He starts ticking the points off on his fingers as he goes through them, his voice getting louder and louder, crowding Ray up against the truck. "The job? After Vegas, do you really think anybody's gonna turn you down for early retirement? Lucia? It's not like they don't have schools and shit up here, Vecchio, and Fraser couldn't love that little girl more if she was actually his kid. So why the fuck can't you just stay up here and be happy?" 

Kowalski's shaking, and his eyes are way too bright, but he's glaring at Ray, furious and unhappy, standing right up in his space, so close that Ray could count his eyelashes. 

"Are you really that fucking clueless?" Ray says. "You think I could do that while you're back in Chicago being miserable? You think _Fraser_ could do that? He'd chew his own arm off before he chose between us, and there's only so much more of this he's gonna be able to take before he puts all three of us on the next plane back to Chicago." 

Kowalski sucks in a ragged breath, and expels it in something that Ray's pretty sure is supposed to be a laugh. 

"I wouldn't do that," Fraser says, and Ray almost has a heart attack. Fraser's standing at the corner of the barn, with Dief beside him and Lucia peeking over his shoulder, in some kind of carrying sling. She makes that little giggle-coo noise that she does sometimes, when she's excited to see somebody. "I have no intention of asking either of you to leave," Fraser continues. "Perhaps we should sit down and talk about this." 

"Besides the departure schedule for the next flight south, I don't see what there is to talk about here, Fraser," Kowalski says. Dief whimpers.

"We might begin with your shared misapprehension that I want either of you to leave," Fraser says. 

"I appreciate that you don't wanna be rude, Benny," Ray says. "But come on, this whole situation is a mess, we can't keep going like this."

"Exactly," Fraser says. "Which is why we should talk." 

"Talking isn't going to fix anything," Kowalski says. 

"And running away will?" Fraser asks. His voice has gone all bland and pleasant, in the way that means he's starting to get mad. 

"You sure that's a stone you really want to throw, Fraser?" Ray asks quietly.

Fraser looks stricken, all the building anger draining right out of him. "Ray, I didn't have a choice, I had my orders--" Dief makes a growling noise in his throat, his tail twitching. 

"Right, of course," Ray says. "And they wouldn't let you use any of those hundred and thirty six vacation days to wrap things up in Chicago, would they?" 

Fraser's shoulders slump. "You're right. I made a mistake, and I owe you an apology." 

"Water under the bridge, Benny," Ray says, and Fraser gives him a weak smile. 

"I would hate to make that same mistake again, by letting the two of you leave without at least attempting to clear the air between us," Fraser says. 

Kowalski's chin goes up. "Hey, this is between you and Vecchio. You guys have a nice chat." 

"This is between all three of us," Fraser says. "Please, Ray." 

Kowalski takes a couple of deep breaths, like he's trying to talk himself into just walking away. Ray can't quite make himself echo Fraser--he's not sure he's got any right to ask Kowalski for anything anyway--but he needs Kowalski to be a part of whatever conversation Fraser wants to have. Maybe Kowalski sees that in his face or maybe it's because Fraser said please, Ray doesn't know and he doesn't really care, because Kowalski's expression softens just a little, and he lowers his chin cautiously. 

"Fine," he says. "Let's talk."

*

Inside, Fraser takes Lucia out of the carrying sling, and Ray feels him hesitate for just a second, holding her tight against his chest before he passes her to Ray. Ray's heart does something clenchy and painful. He can't look at Fraser.

Lucia chatters and giggles the whole time Ray's getting her out of her cold weather clothes, and when he puts her down in her playpen while he gets her a bottle, she starts yelling, wanting more attention. Kowalski'd been fighting with his boots, finally kicking them off and heading towards the bathroom, but he pauses when Lucia gets going. She gives him a big-eyed look through the mesh of the playpen, and Kowalski caves. He picks her up and carries her over to her blanket, sprawling out beside her. Ray looks away and focuses on making sure that every scoop of formula is exactly, perfectly level.

Fraser's on the other side of the table, pulling out the stuff for sandwiches and filling up the kettle. Apparently they're going to do this talking thing like civilised grownups, over food. Like a business proposal, or a Mob hit, Ray thinks kind of hysterically, and has to bite his tongue hard to keep from losing it. 

"Well, shall we go ahead and eat?" Fraser says. He sounds weirdly subdued, like he's so anxious he can't even bring himself to try and hide it behind that too-hearty façade he puts on sometimes. 

Kowalski brings Lucia over and starts to put her in her highchair, but Fraser says, "I'll hold her, if that's all right."

"Sure, Benny," Ray says, his heart aching at how desperate Fraser looks, like he's trying to spend as much time as possible with Lucia before he loses his chance. 

Lucia picks up where she'd left off in whatever one-sided conversation she'd been having with Kowalski, babbling at Fraser, who listens intently and makes thoughtful noises while he opens up a jar of babyfood for her. Kowalski sits down opposite them and starts picking the crusts off his sandwich. Ray tries to eat a couple of bites of his own, but it's hard to swallow, and his stomach feels like it's full of rocks. 

"Before I came to Chicago, I'd spent most of my career working alone," Fraser says, when Lucia's mostly too busy eating her pears to interrupt. "I suppose I came to accept that as the natural order of things. Your friendship, Ray, was a revelation." He gives Ray a small, warm smile that lights Ray's insides up like a flashbulb. "To be offered that kind of loyalty and camaraderie--perhaps that sort of thing happened in the books I read as a child, but it certainly wasn't something I could ever expect in my own life." He rubs his thumb over his eyebrow and ducks his head. "I suppose that being given the impossible made me greedy, because I began to hope for more, for intimacy of a different nature."

"Yeah, and it looks like you got it," Kowalski says, pushing his chair back from the table. "Congratulations, Fraser."

Fraser's eyes get wide and a little panicky.

"Wait, Ray, hear me out. Becoming your partner and your friend meant that I was given the impossible not once, but twice, don't you see? Surely that should have been enough for anyone, but I found myself still hoping for more, longing for the intimacy of a partnership that fulfilled every sense of the word. Then, through the circumstances of your and Ray's undercover work, suddenly I was faced with the potential for two such partnerships." He lets out a strangled little chuckle. "And I was terrified. Terrified that I was reading the situation incorrectly, terrified of ruining the best friendships I had ever had. I could never choose between the two of you." 

"You already did," Kowalski says. "You picked Vecchio, Fraser. You picked him, and his kid, and the happily ever after." 

"You were in Chicago!" Ray says. "You can't treat that like an informed decision, neither one of us knew what the hell you were doing." 

"Like that matters?" Kowalski says. "You guys went after what you really wanted. I'm just a, you know, an afterthought."

"It certainly does matter, Ray," Fraser says. "You're an integral piece of this relationship." 

"There ain't no relationship here," Kowalski snaps. "Because, okay, we both want you, but you can't choose between us? There's only one way that ends, Fraser, and it's with a couple of one-way tickets back to Chicago, like Vecchio said." 

"That is one outcome, yes," Fraser agrees. "But I was thinking--hoping--that perhaps I might not have to choose." His face is bright red, and the spoon he's using to feed Lucia rattles against the lip of the jar when he reaches out to get her more peaches. 

Ray feels kind of light-headed. "What exactly are you saying, Benny?" 

Fraser swallows. "That instead of facing the impossible task of choosing one of you over the other, the three of us could negotiate a shared intimacy that is mutually agreeable to all parties." Lucia's banging her fists on the table, impatient for the rest of her lunch, but Fraser's hand is shaking too badly to use the spoon. He offers her the bottle instead. 

"A threesome," Kowalski says flatly.

"Well, I suppose that is one of the modern terms for such an arrangement, but I had been thinking of the more historic _ménage à trois_ , which to me seems to imply a more stable domestic and emotional commitment." 

"Jesus, Benny," Ray says. "What the hell makes you think that would work?" 

"There are several cultures in which polyamorous relationships are among the accepted norms," Fraser says. "Ethnographic research suggests that they are no more or less inherently effective than traditional monogamous relationships." 

"I meant with us specifically," Ray says. 

"It would give all of us what we want," Fraser says, like it's the simplest thing in the world. 

"What makes you think me and Vecchio want each other like that?" Kowalski says. 

"A _ménage à trois_ needn't necessarily be predicated on three unilateral relationships," Fraser says. "But I admit that I did think there were some not entirely platonic feelings between the two of you." 

"Yeah," Ray says, because maybe he doesn't know how things stand between him and Kowalski, but his body is loud and clear on the non-platonic part. "Unless you je--I mean, get intimate with all your friends in the supply closet, Kowalski."

Fraser's eyes widen, and his breathing hitches a little.

Kowalski's not looking at him, though, shoving back from the table and pacing around the kitchen nook. "I don't--look, Fraser, I get that you don't wanna leave anybody out. But that's not how life works, okay? This has been about you and Vecchio since the beginning, and maybe you both took a little detour with me, because I was there, but that doesn't mean you want me for real. And I can't--I _won't_ be part of this just because you feel sorry for me." 

Fraser turns in his chair, his hand going to Lucia's bottle to steady it. "It wouldn't be like that, Ray. I told you the first week we met that I found you attractive."

"Sure, but you were speaking hypo-- uh--hypothermically," Kowalski says, sounding pained. 

"Hypothetically," Fraser offers. "Ray, I find you very attractive, and should you need empirical proof of that statement, I would be happy to provide it." 

"I cannot believe you just said that where my daughter could _hear you_ ," Ray says, smiling a little despite himself and the gravity of this whole situation. Fraser looks horrified. 

"Hey, I barely understood that," Kowalski says. "I don't think it's gonna do her any permanent damage." He stops pacing and takes a deep breath, meeting Ray's eyes. "What do you think, Vecchio? You okay with Fraser giving me some imperial proof, and seeing where it goes?" 

Ray looks at Kowalski, standing there willing to risk getting his heart stomped on for the two of them, and Fraser, who looks like Ray's holding the key to everything he's ever wanted. 

"Yeah," he says, and to his surprise, it isn't hard to say at all. "Yeah, I'd be okay with that." 

*

After they've eaten--or, in Kowalski's case, picked apart his sandwich and fed most of it to Dief--Fraser passes Lucia off to Ray and proceeds to rattle around the kitchen area, washing dishes and straightening things up with frenetic, nervous energy. Kowalski's pacing again and between the two of them, Ray is going to go out of his mind before they ever make it to the bedroom. 

"Would you stop that?" he grumbles at Kowalski, and shoves Lucia at him. "Here, read her a story or something before you wear a hole in the floor." Fraser has run out of dishes to wash and things to straighten and is polishing the knobs on the faucet on the kitchen sink, but at least he's being still. Ray rolls his eyes, but resists the urge to say anything. He's feeling pretty wound up and jittery himself, but one of the things he got real good at in Vegas was looking calm no matter what was going on inside his head, so he sits there and watches Kowalski fumble his way through the book about the lady and her cat who ran the Iditarod, and tries not to freak out. 

Going for a walk with Fraser must've worn Lucia out or something, because Kowalski's not even halfway through the book before her eyelids start getting heavy and she pops her thumb in her mouth. She's fast asleep two pages later. Kowalski drops his chin down to rub against her hair. 

"Sweet dreams, baby," he says, standing up carefully to put her down in the playpen. She makes a little smacking noise around her thumb, and Kowalski stands there for a second watching her, while Ray's heart ties itself in knots at the expression on his face. Ray doesn't realise Fraser's come up behind him until Fraser puts a hand on his shoulder. 

"Ray, did you want to--that is, I'm not entirely sure--" Considering that this was all his idea, Fraser's having a really hard time being coherent about it. 

"I think this part is about you and Kowalski," Ray says. "I'll, uhm, I'll just hang back and watch?" His voice gets kind of squeaky there at the end, but Fraser's eyes have gone all dark and hungry, like he really, really likes that idea. Kowalski makes a needy noise in the back of his throat, and Fraser reaches out to grab his hand. 

Ray hadn't been sure how he'd feel about seeing the two of them together, because he wants them both and he's never done anything like this before, but when Fraser pulls Kowalski through the door to his bedroom and kisses him, Ray stops worrying about it. Kowalski just _melts_ into Fraser's touch, and Fraser's holding onto him so tightly that Ray thinks he must be leaving bruises, like he's scared if he lets go, Kowalski will disappear. 

But Kowalski's not going anywhere. It looks like his knees are barely holding him up, and he's got his fists clenched in the fabric of Fraser's shirt. Ray closes the door behind them.

Fraser's backing Kowalski towards the bed, laying him down on top of the covers and climbing on top of him, barely pausing to kick off his unlaced hiking boots. Kowalski groans and Fraser grinds down against him through their jeans, giving him an arch, expectant look. 

"Yeah, okay," Kowalski gasps. "I think I'm starting to get the picture." Fraser lets out a breathless huff of laughter, and Kowalski makes a frustrated noise and drags Fraser's head down to kiss him. 

It feels awkward, standing here in the doorway watching them, so Ray inches his way around the bed and sits down on the broad window sill. Fraser's giving Kowalski the same all-over treatment he'd given Ray, kissing every inch of skin he can reach and then pulling Kowalski's layers aside to get at his collarbones, his wrists, the taut stretch of his belly. It'd be easier to get him naked and move under the blankets, but then Fraser pops open the buttons on Kowalski's fly, looking up at Ray through his eyelashes as he starts mouthing at the sharp angles of Kowalski's hips, and Ray realises they're doing it this way for _him_ , so that he can see. Ray groans and presses his palm against the front of his slacks. 

"Ray?" Fraser lifts his head a little, checking on him. 

"I'm good," Ray says. "This is good." 

Kowalski makes a breathless noise of agreement, rocking his hips up off the bed a little for emphasis. Fraser smiles and drops his head again, getting back to what he was doing. He's taking his time, giving Kowalski his proof with meticulous little licks and bites and kisses, making Kowalski writhe and beg underneath his mouth. The afternoon Arctic sun streaming through a crack in the curtains behind Ray makes the thatch of curls framed in the V of Kowalski's fly glint gold. Fraser runs his fingers through them, sweeping his thumb over the head of Kowalski's dick. 

Kowalski makes a keening noise and says, "For fuck's sake, Fraser!"

Fraser hums happily and licks a stripe up the underside of Kowalski's dick, real slow and easy, like he's savouring it. Kowalski stuffs his fist in his mouth to muffle the noises he's making. Then Fraser starts going at it for real, wrapping his mouth around Kowalski's cock and making these little soft appreciative noises, like he's having the time of his life sucking Kowalski's cock. He slides a hand down to rub against the front of his jeans, and Ray makes a strangled noise.

Kowalski looks over at him, with his eyes huge and hazy with pleasure. "Get over here, Vecchio." 

Fraser's big soft bed with all of its blankets and pillows is perfect for this. Ray wonders if Fraser'd ever thought about this these last couple months, if he'd ever laid here alone and imagined Ray or Kowalski or the two of them together while he jerked himself off. Ray climbs onto the bed beside Kowalski, bending down to kiss him. Fraser makes an approving noise, looking up at them along the length of Kowalski's torso, and Kowalski shudders, arching up off the bed like a livewire. Fraser splutters a little, pulling away. 

"Sorry, sorry," Kowalski gasps, reaching down to grab Fraser's collar and haul him up alongside the two of them. Kowalski kisses Fraser real deep and slow, like he's trying to taste himself in Fraser's mouth. God, the two of them are going to kill him with this. Ray shoves his hard-on up against Kowalski's hip, helplessly turned on and desperate for any kind of contact. 

"Wearing too many clothes," Kowalski says. "Skin, Vecchio, now. You too, Frase." He strips out of his clothes and then winces at how cold the room is. Fraser loses the last of his layers and drags the blankets up over them. He looks like he's thinking about going back after Kowalski's cock, but Ray's already got his hand wrapped around it, hot and slick with Fraser's spit, and is rubbing his thumb insistently over the slit. Kowalski makes a sobbing noise.

Fraser leans over him to kiss Ray, and Ray can still taste Kowalski there, faintly bitter on his tongue. Ray's got his dick shoved up against Kowalski's hip again, rocking against him in the same rhythm he's using on Kowalski's dick. Fraser pulls back a little, and just watches them with an awestruck expression. 

"Oh, _Ray_ ," he says, and Ray knows he's talking to both of them. "You can't imagine how beautiful the two of you are." He reaches out and puts his hand over Ray's, speeding up their rhythm. 

Kowalski comes all over his belly with a shout. Ray kisses him, quick, to shut him up. Kowalski sighs and slides his hand down to Ray's dick, and for a second, Ray flashes back to Kowalski jerking him off in the precinct supply closet, a few days and what feels like a lifetime ago, angry and desperate. But now Kowalski's smiling, all languorous post-orgasmic bliss, and beside them, Fraser's watching everything, fisting his cock almost lazily. 

"C'mon, Vecchio," Kowalski says against Ray's mouth. He speeds up, doing something twisty and heart-stopping on the downstroke. "Come for me." 

Fraser gasps and says, "Yes, Ray, please," and Ray does. 

"That was crazy hot, Vecchio," Kowalski mumbles. "You see that, Fraser?" 

"Indeed," Fraser says in a strained voice, and, God, he's so close now. But he's not speeding up, not giving himself what he needs, not coming. He's just _teasing_ himself, hovering right there on the edge, watching the two of them as they wind down. 

"Oh my God, Benny," Ray says. Fraser's all flushed and intense and controlled, getting off on holding back, on watching them, savouring it, and if Ray'd hadn't just come, watching Fraser like that would be enough to get him there. 

Kowalski catches Ray's eye and grins, and Ray knows exactly what he's thinking. They make a pretty good team, easy as clockwork here in Fraser's bed, just like on the streets of Chicago. Kowalski twists around to kiss Fraser, and Ray reaches over to cover Fraser's hand with his own, pushing him just that little bit further that he needs, and it's like electricity, the three of them on a circuit, lighting up like a Christmas tree when Fraser finally shudders and gives it up. 

"Oh," he says softly, when Kowalski pulls away and lets his head drop back onto the pillow. "That was--" 

"Shhh," Ray says, patting his hip. "C'mere, Benny." Fraser scoots closer, pressing up beside them and draping his arm over Ray's back. The space under the blankets smells like sweat and come, with Kowalski's hair gel and Ray's cologne all tangled up in it. With an effort, Ray leans over and buries his face in the crook of Fraser's neck, breathing him in. He doesn't smell like anything but sweat and sex and that castile soap he uses. 

Ray smiles, then puts his head back down on Kowalski's chest and falls asleep.

*

He doesn't think he's been out for long when he wakes up to Fraser trying to ease out of the bed without disturbing them. Ray listens for Lucia, but it sounds like she's still asleep. Kowalski, apparently also still asleep, says something garbled and plaintive that makes Ray grope for his hand and squeeze it tight.

"I'll be right back," Fraser assures him. Ray hears water running in the bathroom and with a heroic effort, flops off of Kowalski and onto his back. Kowalski groans and buries his head under Fraser's pillow. After a few minutes, Fraser comes back, clean and wide-awake. He looks at Ray and Kowalski sprawled out together and ducks his head, beaming. Ray grins dopily back at him.

"Come back to bed, Benny," he says, lifting up the blankets. Kowalski whines at the rush of cold air and tries to burrow into Ray. Fraser laughs and crawls back under the covers, sticking his cold feet up against Ray's shins. 

"Hey, quit that," Ray grumbles, but he doesn't move away. Fraser's watching him over the top of Kowalski's spiky hair, his face soft and content. After a second, though, he cocks his head, frowning a little. 

"Lucia's awake," he says, starting to sit up. 

"Dief'll keep her entertained," Ray tries, even though he knows it won't work. He can hear her now himself, fussing a little. 

"Diefenbaker has absolutely no sense of what is and isn't appropriate behaviour around a child," Fraser says, gathering up his clothes and getting dressed. "He's a terrible influence." 

Ray rolls his eyes and starts steeling himself to climb back out into the chill of the room. He takes a shower, pressing his fingers over the places where Fraser and Kowalski had touched him, feeling the echo of their fingers and mouths on his skin. It makes him shiver, makes him feel bright and fragile, filled to the brim with hope and terror and something he's not ready to give a name to yet. 

He lets the water pound down around him until he feels less like he might shatter apart if somebody looks at him the wrong way, and goes to get dressed. Kowalski's progressed to sitting up on the edge of the bed, swinging his feet and shivering a little, staring blearily down at the floor. Ray leaves him alone.

Out in the main room, Fraser's lying on his stomach on the blanket next to Lucia, writing in his journal. She's on her back, kicking her feet and making the occasional grab for Dief's tail, cooing to herself. Ray stands there in the doorway for a minute, watching them, and Fraser looks up and gives him a quick, shy smile. 

Ray feels his face getting red, and he goes over to the sink to get himself a glass of water. He'd thought that after they'd fucked, things would fall into place and he'd know where this was headed, what they were all going to do. But he just feels confused and groundless, full of wanting and fear, and no idea how to even begin to talk about it so they can figure out what comes next. 

He's making coffee just for something to do with his hands when Kowalski comes out of Fraser's bedroom. The atmosphere in the room changes immediately, because Kowalski's not bleary and fucked-out any more. He's wired, radiating anxiety and that angry defiance that Ray knows by now means he's scared he's going to get hurt. 

Fraser closes his journal and sits up. "Ray?" Kowalski's pacing, barely even paying attention to Lucia when she sits up and smiles at him. Fraser stands up. He's running his thumb over his eyebrow and his back is just a little too straight, the Mountie equivalent of Kowalski's protective anger. Dief whines at them and shoots Ray a plaintive look. 

"Hey, I don't know what's going on," Ray says. Kowalski comes over and reaches for the coffee pot, which Ray moves out of his reach. "Nuh uh, caffeine is not the answer to whatever your problem is." 

Kowalski snarls at him, but without much heat, and grabs the box of Smarties from the shelf instead, shaking out a handful. 

"Look, I just--" He crunches up all of the Smarties in one mouthful and scrubs his hands through his hair. "What are we doing with this? I mean, it all sounds good now and what we just did, that was--" he gestures expressively "--but it's probably not gonna take long for you guys to wish you didn't have that skinny Polack third wheel hanging around. I can't do that, I cannot sign up for that life and then get kicked out of it."

"Nobody can make promises about the future, Ray," Fraser tells him. "But surely that uncertainty isn't worth refusing to give it a chance." 

Kowalski scrubs his hands through his hair and looks at Ray. "What about Lucia? I--Vecchio, I wanna be involved in her life, if I do this, I don't want to be just her dads' roommate with benefits. I mean, I get that she's got you, and Fraser's her godfather, she doesn't need me--" 

Ray doesn't even know what to say to that. He looks over at Lucia, still playing on the blanket with Dief, completely oblivious to the fact that her entire future is being negotiated a few feet away. 

"Are you sure you're not just on board because of Lucia?" Ray asks. "I mean, if she were still in Vegas with her mom, would you still want this?" 

Kowalski's fists clench, and Fraser shifts a little, getting ready to intervene. "What the hell do you think, Vecchio? You want me to say she doesn't matter, that things would've been the same? That's not how it works. Yeah, I'm on board because of Lucia. But that doesn't mean I don't want the rest of it, the parts with you and Fraser too. Did it look like I was faking it back there?" 

"No," Ray says softly. He still doesn't know what to say. It's not that he doesn't want this, but it all seems so huge and impossible; how is he supposed to tell Kowalski that, yeah, Ray wants him to be there, wants him and Fraser to help him raise Lucia, wants them all to be a _family_. It's too much to wrap his brain around.

"Ray, it would be difficult--perhaps impossible--to separate out any single element of this relationship to be different for only one of us," Fraser says, talking to both of them but looking at Ray. 

"I know, Benny," Ray says. "I wouldn't want it to be like that, anyway. This is just--this is huge, you know? I want this to work, I swear I do. But it scares the shit out of me." 

"Me too, Vecchio," Kowalski says. Fraser doesn't say anything, just watches him. 

"I--look, I think I need a little time," Ray says. "You know, to think." 

"Of course, Ray," Fraser says immediately, taking a step towards him, but Ray holds up a hand. 

"I'm gonna get a room in town, Benny," he says, and he's expecting the way Fraser's face falls, but it still makes his heart hurt. "I just need some space, okay? If we all stay here, we're just gonna wind up in bed again, and this is too big a decision to make that way. I gotta be sure." 

"I understand," Fraser says. He looks absolutely heartbroken, and it takes everything Ray's got to keep from taking that decision back. "Would you like a ride into town?" 

"This is crap, Vecchio," Kowalski says. "Either you want this or you don't, which is it?" 

"Of course I want it," Ray says. "But some of us have to live in the real world, Kowalski. There's more to this than what I want." 

"That's enough, Ray," Fraser says, when Kowalski opens his mouth to keep arguing. "Let me know when you're ready, and I'll help you take your things out to the truck," he says to Ray. And then he turns and goes into his bedroom and shuts the door, really carefully.

Kowalski makes a furious noise and goes over to the door, shoving his feet into his boots and grabbing his jacket. He slams the door behind him as he goes off into the melting snow, and Lucia starts to cry. Dief whimpers. 

"Hey, I gotcha, Lucy," Ray says, picking her up. She sniffles against his shoulder. "Look, don't cry. We'll figure this out, okay?" Ray bounces her a couple of times, and goes to start packing up their stuff.

*

Kowalski's still gone when Ray knocks on Fraser's bedroom door to tell him they're ready to go. Fraser tries to smile at Lucia, but it looks more like a grimace, and he gives up on it pretty quickly. Neither of them says anything on the ride into town, and even Lucia's keeping quiet. 

When they get to the hotel, Ray says, "I'll be in touch, okay? This isn't--I'm not going to just walk out on you again, Benny. I promise." 

Fraser nods. "All right, Ray." He keeps looking straight ahead out the windshield, and Ray wants to lean over and kiss him, tell him to turn around, that Ray's being an idiot and this was just a mistake and he's sorry. But he doesn't. 

Lucia waves as Fraser pulls the truck away, and Fraser's face crumples into an expression of abject misery. But he rolls the window down to wave back at her, and keeps waving until he turns the corner out of sight.

Ray turns around and goes to check in.

The proprietor knows who they are, of course, and seems to think it's a little weird that Ray's coming to stay in town, but she's polite enough--of course she is--and is totally charmed by Lucia, even though Lucia knows something is up and is therefore being kind of sulky and distant. The room they wind up with is a little shabby, but it's clean and there's a portable crib for Lucia. 

Ray takes her out of her carseat and sits down on the bed with her in his lap. He's supposed to be getting some space so he can think about the future, but his mind keeps turning back to Fraser and Kowalski, wondering if they're talking or fucking or if Kowalski's still out venting his anger in the snow. Or maybe Fraser didn't go back, maybe he's taken Dief out into the woods, trying to clear his head. Ray wishes he could do that. Instead, he reaches over and grabs the phone off the bedside table. It's probably going to cost an arm and a leg to call back to Chicago from here, but he's been putting it off way too long already.

It rings for so long he's starting to get hopeful that he's going to be able to get away with just leaving a message when his ma answers. She starts crying as soon as he says, "Hi, Ma," and keeps on through all of the explanations he tries to give her, so he gives up talking and waits it out. 

"Why would you do that to us?" she demands, when she's stopped sobbing. "Four days, and we didn't know if you were alive, if the baby was okay, what was happening! What's the matter with you?" 

"Ma, I'm sorry," Ray says. "I really am. I thought--look, it doesn't matter now, okay, but I was just trying to keep everybody safe." 

"And now you're in Canada," Ma says. "With Benton? And Ray?" 

"Yeah," Ray says. God, there's no way that doesn't sound weird-- _queer_ , even--and she's quiet for so long that Ray starts to really worry. 

"Take good care of my granddaughter up there," she says finally. "Make sure she wears a hat when she goes outside." 

"Of course, Ma," Ray says automatically. "She really likes it up here." 

Ma sighs. "I guess you don't know when you're coming back."

"Not exactly," Ray says. "But I'll call you in a couple days, okay?" 

Ma's making tearful noises again, and in the background, Ray hears Frannie demanding, "Is that Ray? Let me talk to him." 

Ray can't deal with talking to Frannie right now. "I love you Ma, I gotta go," he says, and hangs up. He's not sure how long that'll work--Frannie's got the 2-7's database at her disposal, and she knows how to use it. But for now, at least, it's just him and Lucia in this cramped little hotel room in the Arctic. Ray looks out the window at the dome of the igloo church, curving against the bright blue sky, and a helpless swell of laughter bubbles up in his throat. He laughs for a long time, until there are tears streaming down his face and he's not sure if he's laughing any more or sobbing.

*

Later that evening, Ray bundles Lucia up in her cold weather clothes and takes her down the street to Margie's for dinner. It's bustling, and Ray waits until somebody vacates a booth that'll let him sit with his back to the wall and where he can see every door to the room. Despite the crowd, Margie remembers them and is thrilled to see Lucia. 

"Corporal Fraser and his other friend aren't with you?" she asks, after she's taken down Ray's order. 

"They had something come up," Ray says. Margie frowns, but lets it go. Ray can feel people's eyes on him, and has to constantly remind himself that they're safe up here, that it's only paranoia making his heart beat fast and his palms sweat. But it's too much. When Margie brings out his food, he asks her if she can box it up to go, earning himself another curious frown, and he knows that's only going to feed the gossip. But he's going to lose it if he has to stay here. 

"There's a little something there for the corporal and his friend too," Margie says with a smile when she brings Ray back his boxed up dinner with the cheque. 

"Thanks," Ray manages, and bails. Lucia starts fussing when they leave--upset at not getting her dinner on time, and probably missing Fraser and Kowalski and Dief and the familiarity of Fraser's cabin. By the time he gets her back to the hotel, she's built up into a full-on wail, and his hands are doing the old familiar shaking routine, while he tries not to hyperventilate. 

She's fine once he manages to get her bottle uncapped for her, but his appetite is totally gone and after she's done, he puts everything away in the room's grubby little fridge. It's a little after seven o'clock. Lucia's yawning and rubbing her eyes, and Ray pulls the black-out curtains and turns on the lamp, pulling out one of the library books he'd crammed into her diaper bag. It's one of the one's he'd gotten for Fraser to read to her, about some explorer named McKenzie and his dog. Ray remembers the look on Fraser's face as he drove away, and feels a little sick to his stomach. 

Lucia's tired and grumpy but she's resisting falling asleep, and after a while Ray abandons the book and just walks her up and down the room, wishing he could carry a tune in a bucket to sing something for her. When she finally does drift off, she wakes up as he tries to put her down in the portable crib and starts crying. Ray gives up and lies down on the bed with her. 

Ray's exhausted, but his thoughts keep spinning around and around, over the choices he has to make. He knows what he wants, that part is easy--he wants Fraser and Kowalski and the tangled knot of partnerships they're offering. But he's still reeling from Vegas, from getting Lucia, and he's not sure he can trust himself. If they try this thing, and it blows up in their faces--well, Ray's already damaged, and he's pretty sure that might break him permanently. And Lucia's already lost one parent--Ray doesn't know how to weigh the risk of losing Fraser and Kowalski against the way they care about her. 

Even if everything does work out--if this relationship holds--it's not like it's just gonna be happily ever after. There are the issues of geography, and work, and what it'd mean to raise his daughter with two other guys, and how that'll affect Lucia when she's old enough for it to matter. 

Looking at all of that balanced against what Ray _wants_ , the right choice is obvious, the same as it's been since he first got off the plane up here. But he doesn't have to admit that yet. It's too late to do anything tonight. Lucia coos and mumbles in her sleep, and Ray kisses her hair and tries to keep breathing around the hollow, gnawing ache spreading out inside him.

*

Two days later, Ray and Lucia are still in the hotel, and he's starting to run out of excuses. He'd told himself it was to figure out how to tell Fraser and Kowalski, but every time he tries to think about what he's going to say, his heart starts beating too fast and he feels like he's going to start shaking until he falls to pieces. He takes Lucia down to look at the river and they've been back to Margie's a couple of times, early enough or late enough that they're usually the only ones around. Mostly, he reads to her or watches her play while he flips aimlessly through the sparse offerings on the television and tries not to think. The phone rang, once, but he pulled the jack out of the wall and hasn't reconnected it. 

He's not expecting the knock on the door. Adrenaline floods stinging through Ray's system at the knock, and for a second, he can't move. Then Kowalski's voice says, "Do not make me break this door down, Vecchio." Lucia recognises him and turns to give Ray an excited look. 

Ray thinks about refusing to open the door, but Kowalski probably would break it down, and then Ray would still have to deal with him, plus it'd probably make Fraser look bad, hanging around with property-destroying Americans. So Ray gets up and cracks the door open. 

"What?" 

"When's your flight back to Chicago?" Kowalski demands. Ray doesn't say anything. Kowalski makes a disgusted noise and gets his shoulder into the gap, shoving it open and stepping in. Lucia's so excited to see him that she's hiccoughing, banging on the side of the portable crib to get his attention. 

"I see you, pipsqueak," Kowalski says. "Just a second, okay? I gotta have a discussion with your dad." He grabs Ray's arm and hauls him towards the tiny bathroom. Ray can't get away from him without punching him, which he's not about to do in front of Lucia, so he lets himself be dragged, and closes the door behind them. 

"What part of needing a little space do you not understand?" he asks, wrenching loose from Kowalski's grip and pushing him back against the sink. 

"Do not even start with me, Vecchio. You've had your space. Fraser might be willing to sit around forever hoping you'll get your head out of your ass, but I am done. Come back to Fraser's with me." 

"I'm going back to Chicago," Ray says, wondering when he'd stopped being able to fall back on Armando to keep his voice from shaking. 

"If you meant that, you'd've already been on the plane," Kowalski says. "Vecchio-- _Ray_ , what're you holding out for? What do you need that we're not offering?" He takes a step towards Ray, and the bathroom is so tiny that it puts them right up against each other, practically chest to chest. The towel rack is digging into Ray's shoulders. Kowalski brings his hands up to frame Ray's face and kisses him, soft and slow and gentle. "Come on, tell me." 

"I'm not holding out for anything," Ray says. "It's not the two of you. It's this whole thing--if it doesn't work, I'm not sure I can come back from that, not after Vegas. I'm not exactly in the running for the world's most well-adjusted and emotionally stable ex-cop right now." The corner of Kowalski's mouth curls up, but it's not mocking. He just looks a little sad and a lot understanding. 

"You just gotta give yourself time," Kowalski says. "Let me and Fraser help. Fraser put me back together after Stella. He can handle a little post-Vegas repair work, trust me." 

"It's not just about me," Ray says. "If this goes to hell, Lucia'd be the one who really got hurt. I can't give her a--" he swallows hard--"a _family_ and then have it be taken away again. She's already lost her mom." 

Kowalski's breathing hitches. "That won't happen. Fraser would move mountains to keep from hurting Lucia," he says. "So would I. It doesn't matter how this goes down, we're always gonna be there for her."

"I know," Ray says. "I know that. I want that to be enough. But there's so much other stuff involved here. Where would we live? I don't know if I can make it up here, don't know what I'm gonna do for work. But Fraser's sure as hell not going back to Chicago. And no matter where we are, three guys living together, raising a kid? That's gonna upset people. I don't know if I can deal with that, if I can ask Lucia to deal with that when she grows up." 

"Hey, we can handle all that," Kowalski says. He puts his arms around Ray and holds on tight. "We can give it a shot up here. If things aren't working out when we run out of leave, we can try something new. Six months here, six months there, or something. And if people are assholes, Fraser'll guilt them into, you know, rethinking their prejudices." He presses his face against Ray's neck and makes a thoughtful noise. "Hey, me and you, we could open up shop up here," he says, a little muffled. "Learn how to work on snowmobiles, light aircraft maybe. Could be fun." His cocky smile curves against Ray's skin before he pulls away, his expression turning serious.

"Look, I'm not saying it's gonna be easy. But we'll figure it out. We're a team, Vecchio. Me and you had the best solve rate in the district. And you ever see a problem Fraser couldn't fix?"

"I don't always like the way he goes about it," Ray says with a small smile.

"Yeah, me neither. But it'd be two against one, we could keep him from doing anything too crazy. No jumping out of windows." 

"Or blowing up my car," Ray says. He puts his head down on Kowalski's shoulder. "Okay. Let's go home."

*

Fraser's sitting at the kitchen table when Ray pushes open the cabin door. He's on his feet and moving before Ray's even crossed the threshold properly, but he pulls up short after a couple of steps. He looks as hopeful and vulnerable as Ray's ever see him, and all the worry and fear churning inside of Ray goes quiet and still. In Ray's arms, Lucia makes an excited noise. 

"Hey, Benny," Ray says. "You still got those axes? I was thinking we could maybe build an addition or two onto this place, give Lucy a room of her own." 

Ray would've thought the smile Fraser'd given him a few days ago, when he'd first seen them in the diner, was the widest, brightest smile anybody could give another person. But the smile that breaks across Fraser's face now isn't even in the same league; it's like the sun coming up after the Arctic winter, bright and warm and blinding. 

Ray's still reeling from it when Fraser puts his arms around them, holding on as tight as he can without squashing Lucia, who squawks indignantly. Behind them, Kowalski slings his arm around Ray's shoulders and curls his hand around the back of Fraser's neck. Dief is yipping and dancing around, his tail whacking them all on the legs. 

"I do indeed still have them," Fraser says. "In fact, I believe I have three." He shifts a little, reaching down to cup his hand around Lucia's head, his thumb stroking over her hair. "Welcome home, Lucia."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Call This World Home (Press Kit)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/994568) by [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather)
  * [This World of Ours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107785) by [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather)




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